Last week, CTIA trumpeted the latest results of their semi-annual wireless industry survey with the headline “Consumer Data Traffic Increased 104 Percent.” Among their conclusions were that Americans have a voracious appetite for mobile data, and that the wireless industry in turn needs more spectrum to meet those demands.

However, underlying the statistics are numbers that tell a far different story: in fact, there was a dramaticslowdown in wireless traffic growth during the first half of 2012. Of course, CTIA doesn’t want anyone to realize that, because it is significantly at variance with CTIA’s narrative of an impending “spectrum crunch”into which so much lobbying effort has been invested. [Read More]