Cellular Data Use Has Exploded: Why That’s a Problem

Here’s a quiz: What vital digital resource are we consuming as though it was water, apparently unaware that supply is finite? I’m not talking about electricity (well, not today), but wireless spectrum, the airwaves telephone giants use for cellular services like 5G. You know, the service we only pay attention to when it doesn’t work.

Here’s a fascinating statistic: The amount of data transmitted over cellular phone networks (that doesn’t include Wi-Fi) reached 100 trillion megabytes in the U.S. last year, according to wireless industry trade group the CTIA in a report published on Tuesday. That’s roughly double the level in 2021. In 2013, the amount was 3 trillion.