The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released its Twelfth Annual Report to Congress on the state of competition in the mobile telephone - or Commercial Mobile Radio Services (CMRS) - industry. The FCC concluded that there is effective competition in the CMRS marketplace. The report demonstrates that U.S. consumers continue to experience significant benefits - including low prices, new technologies, improved service quality, and choice among providers - from competition in the CMRS marketplace.
The data shows the following:
- Approximately 280 million people, or 99.8 percent of the U.S. population, have one or more different operators offering mobile telephone service in the census blocks in which they live.
- More than 95 percent of the U.S. population lives in areas with at least three mobile telephone operators competing to offer service.
- More than half of the U.S. population lives in areas with at least five competing mobile telephone operators.
- Approximately 99.3 percent of the U.S. population living in rural counties, or 60.6 million people, have one or more different operators offering mobile telephone service in the census blocks within the rural counties in which they live.
- Approximately 82 percent of the U.S. population lives in census blocks with at least one mobile broadband provider offering service.
In addition, during 2006, the number of mobile telephone subscribers in the United States rose from 213 million to 241.8 million, increasing the nationwide penetration rate to approximately 80 percent. The average amount of minutes that subscribers spend using on their mobile devices increased from 708 minutes per month during the second half of 2005 to 714 minutes per month during the second half of 2006. In addition, the volume of text messaging traffic rose from 9.8 billion messages sent during December 2005 to 18.7 billon messages sent during December 2006. Revenue per minute, which can be used to measure the per-minute price of mobile telephone service, remained unchanged during 2006 at $0.07.