Report: U.S. lead in mobile telecom widens

NEW YORK – A new Deloitte report has found that the U.S. increased its position in the mobile broadband market by 11 percent in the most recent periods covered in Deloitte’s mobile index that compares the U.S. against 19 other countries, each with established mobile broadband sectors, using 15 competitive indicators.
As a result, the U.S. increased its lead by about 44 percent, recovering the ground it lost over the last several years to return to a lead similar to which it had six years ago. Canada, the third ranked region, strengthened its position by gaining about 6 percent, while China continued its nearly decade-long upward movement with a nearly 5 percent increase.
The U.S. position has not always been strong. From 2006 to 2009, approximately three-quarters of the U.S. lead vanished even as the country actively advanced mobile broadband capabilities, mostly because other countries and their governments made significant investments in developing and growing mobile broadband capabilities and usage.
According to the report, if the U.S. loses its current position as the global leader in mobile broadband, the economic consequences could be severe. The top spot could be in jeopardy due to a lack of spectrum availability, which could result in diminished technology eminence as well as a direct loss of $67 billion in gross domestic product and 344,000 jobs in less than a decade in the U.S. With this leadership comes tremendous potential for emerging mobile applications in areas such as telematics, mobile health, and mobile commerce. Traditional activities can also be improved in non-traditional ways with mobile broadband. For example, a recent survey found that 80 percent of physicians use tablets or smartphones to directly influence patient care, and those physicians achieved an average productivity gain of 1.1 hours per day.