US Wireless Industry Invests Over 2.5x More Than European Counterparts

Numerous European executives and policy leaders have recently lamented the relatively poor state of Europe’s digital infrastructure. A letter from nineteen CEOs complained that low levels of mobile network investment risked Europe lagging in a range of mobile-enabled technologies like artificial intelligence, smart grids, and industrial automation. The CEOs pointed to the recent comprehensive analysis of European competitiveness spearheaded by Mario Draghi for the European Commission, which found telecommunications “investment per capita is half of that in the United States, and we are lagging in 5G and fiber deployment.” Indeed, the United States provides a contrast to Europe’s investment challenges. The U.S. wireless industry invests a tremendous amount of money in order to offer world-leading 5G networks, far more than Europe on both an absolute and per-population basis. This is in part thanks to a more favorable policy environment in the United States that encourages vigorous competition between wireless firms. This difference ripples through our respective economies and has real world implications for both consumers and innovators.