Cell Phone Usage

During January, 2009, only about 10% of the U.S. population had smartphones, resulting in network traffic that mostly involved texts and voice, and some modest picture messaging.

Four years later the faster LTE wireless network that Verizon had launched during late 2010, still had not gone mainstream. AT&T said that data usage on its D.C.-area network was more than 16 times larger than it was during 2009. By 2016, 88% of the population owned smartphones.