Continuing Efforts to Measure and Report on Mobile Wireless Competition

[Commentary] The Communications Act requires the submission to Congress each year of reports analyzing the state of competition in the mobile wireless industry. The Seventeenth Mobile Wireless Competition Report was released in December 2014. On May 29, we are updating many of those charts and tables based on recently collected data relevant to competition in the mobile wireless industry. For example, we are providing information on total wireless connections by service segment; overall mobile voice and mobile broadband coverage; and provider-specific coverage. And, we have also added user-friendly interactive coverage maps. This mid-year update reflects our newly focused efforts to capture important details in the evolving mobile wireless marketplace. Among other things, the updated information shows:

• Total wireless connections increased by 23.5 million from 2013 to 2014, with 14.7 million connections added between the 2nd and 4th quarter of 2014
• The post-paid market continues to show noteworthy growth with 3.9 million connections added in the 4th quarter 2014
• Quarterly net adds for connected devices almost doubled between the 4th quarter 2013 and 4th quarter 2014.