The Spectrum Squeeze

Voices are being raised about smartphones’ voracious appetite for wireless spectrum...and the inability of the infrastructure to keep up. The Business Insider recently ran a story on the crisis and what is being proposed to do about it. According to the story, the FCC says that, at current growth rates, we’ll end up with wireless gridlock in 2013. In fact, they also predict that even if we double capacity by 2014, we will still be running a deficit.

The solution is to find more bandwidth for mobile. Previously, the FCC has addressed bandwidth issues by reallocating resources or even moving whole industries to new bandwidth (e.g. TV’s transition from analog to digital frequencies), and then holding auctions of the freed-up frequencies to suit current needs. No the FCC is considering “Incentive Auctions,” voluntary sellbacks from industry to the government, to free up additional spectrum for mobile traffic.