There are currently three nationwide mobile operators (AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile) in the U.S. market, each with more than 100 million subscribers, according to World Trade Organization (WTO) data.
The U.S. telecommunications market has been consolidating over the past four years.
In April 2020, the merger between operators T-Mobile and Sprint was approved after two years of review by various regulatory bodies, including the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Department of Justice and the California Public Utilities Commission.
The value of the U.S. telecommunications market, in terms of revenue, was put at $583.4 billion in 2021.
Earlier, in 2020, the United States recorded an $18.1 billion surplus in telecommunications, computer and information services trade.
While in that year exports totaled $56.7 billion, imports totaled $38.6 billion.
The 36.8% increase in exports between 2015 and 2020 reflects the dynamism of the export sector; imports have remained virtually unchanged over the same period, mainly because of a sharp decline, of $4.0 billion, in imports of computer services between 2019 and 2020.
The increase in exports has been largely due to IT services exports, the value of which has more than doubled since 2015, reaching $42.1 billion in 2020.
Meanwhile, the number of mobile subscribers reached 351 million in 2020, with a penetration rate of 106.2 percent.
AT&T
Between 2015 and 2020, the number of fixed-line subscribers declined by 24 million, and the number of subscribers per capita is the lowest since the 1970s: only three in 10 U.S. citizens were subscribing to fixed-line services in 2020.
On the one hand, the number of subscribers to broadband services, whether wired or wireless, has increased steadily since 2015.
On the other hand, the number of subscribers to fixed broadband services increased by nearly 20 million by 2020 (reaching a penetration rate of 36.4 percent), while wireless broadband services surpassed the 500 million subscriber threshold in 2020, with a penetration rate of 156.7 percent.
Moreover, according to the WTO, the increase in broadband usage is also reflected in the spread of Internet access: nine out of 10 U.S. citizens were using the Internet in 2020, up from nearly 75 percent in 2015.
