Just-released data from the CTIA’s semi-annual wireless industry survey shows continued growth of 4G LTE networks and strong sales of LTE-compatible smartphones in the US have lead to mobile broadband usage more than doubling over the last year.
The data was obtained by All Things D and shows that carriers in the United States handled 1.16 trillion megabytes of data between July 2011 and June 2012, up 104 percent from the 568 billion megabytes used between July 2010 and June 2011.
As of June, 130.8 million smartphones and “wireless PDAs” were in use, an increase of 37 percent from June 2011. Additionally, there were another 21.6 million tablets, laptops, and modems connecting to cellular networks in the US, an increase of 42 percent from the year before.
Users of GSM-based SIM services in the country generally don’t use a whole lot of data, and cannot yet access the 4G LTE networks in the country, though Truphone does plan to add this functionality to Truphone SIM accounts in the future.