http://mobilefuture.org/content/pages/growing_demand_for_wireless_spectrum#.UFmYJLPNAjQ.wordpress

- There is widespread agreement both within government, in the academy, and in the wireless industry that spectrum scarcity in the United States is real. Unchecked, the spectrum crunch we face as a nation will have negative impacts on consumers nationwide, but also can affect our economic productivity, hamper our innovative capacity, and diminish our longer-term global competitiveness. Network engineers have attested that the spectrum crunch already is being felt by many wireless users in some urban areas. With support of President Obama, the FCC Chairman and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, addressing the spectrum challenge has become an issue of national priority. And rightly so. In a time when bipartisanship is in short supply, the fact Democrats and Republicans in Congress joined in common cause with President Obama and the FCC leadership to pass legislation to allow incentive auctions for underutlized broadcast spectrum to proceed is an enormously positive step. The FCC is now preparing for implementing the next steps in this process. But much more remains to be be done by government, and done quickly to ensure American consumers can reliably expect sufficient spectrum over the long haul — especially in freeing-up underutlized swaths of spectrum currently held by various federal agencies. To suggest that spectrum scarcity is somehow either a figment of our imagination, or more cynically, is manufactured, is simply not supported by facts, by science, or by logic.

– To answer’s Steve Crowley’s question, FCC’s data shows that consumer demand for spectrum may exceed existing capacity as early as 2014 can be found here: http://download.broadband.gov/plan/fcc-staff-technical-paper-mobile-broadband-benefits-of-additional-spectrum.pdf

- While the wireless industry and a range of technology innovators also are working on advanced spectrum efficiency and sharing technologies, these take time to deploy and achieve meaningful scale nationally. According to some network engineers, advanced sharing technologies alone are not short-term solutions to address the current spectrum crunch. More here from wireless engineer Peter Rysavy: http://www.rysavy.com/Articles/2012_07_Spectrum_Sharing.pdf

5. Quality spectrum should not be amassed by two monopolies. For example, Sprint and Tmobile have higher frequencies that are no match for the 700 Mhz range of the two incumbents.

6. Spectrum should be sold in 10Mhz up and 20Mhz down bundles, which allows carriers to offer full speed data services.

7. No one carrier should be allowed to amass more than x spectrum, particularly quality spectrum.

8. Most important, if spectrum purchased is not utilized within a year or two, it must be sold again. No company should be allowed to purchase and hoard spectrum, only to resell it fora profit to anyone the choose down the road.

– The Time article mentions “10 Ways Mobile Technology Is Changing Our World,” but note none of the applications depicted are particularly bandwidth intensive.

– Mobile Future criticizes broadcasters for having a lot of spectrum, but Qualcomm, a Mobile Future member, says broadcasting will be an important means of sending the same data to many people. Could the current TV broadcasting system be a part of that distribution, saving more mobile spectrum for unicast purposes?

– The National Broadband Plan says there’s 547 MHz for mobile use, not 409.5 MHz. Why the discrepancy?

– The spectrum you are after, TV broadcast spectrum, is deprecated by Qualcomm as part of the research behind its “1000x mobile data challenge.” Their current scenarios for increasing capacity 1000 times involve keeping current UHF mobile spectrum allocations and adding capacity at higher frequencies, around, say, 3.5 GHz. Because of its limited range, higher frequencies allow for greater frequency reuse. The 1000x challenge is a work in progress, and we’ll see if this view holds.

– “This meager allocation of spectrum is the same amount that was available to support the mobile Internet in 2007 when the iPhone was first introduced.” But, it can be reused by adding more small cells increasing capacity many times more compared to just adding spectrum. Even Qualcomm (again, one of your members) says “the next performance and capacity leap will come from network topology evolution by using a mix of macro cells and small cells – also referred to as a Heterogeneous Network (HetNet) – effectively bringing the network closer to the user,” and not spectrum.

– The Cisco forecasts, one of which you cite, are always high compared to others. I suspect this is due in part to the forecast’s preparation being led by the marketing head in the department that sells hardware to mobile operators, hardware that is intended to address the deluge of data the forecast predicts. So, Mobile Future should consider other forecasts as well. Note that even with the Cisco forecast, however, the year to year growth rate is decreasing (even as the absolute predicted data rises.) Mobile Future should also see the 4G Americas May 2012 report, “New Wireless Broadband Applications and Devices: Understanding the Impact on Networks.” In that report, 4G Americas extrapolates Cisco’s forecast and find the growth rate tending toward zero in 2020. Again, let’s don’t rely on one forecast, but Mobile Future should ask itself what is happening here.

– I don’t recall the FCC ever saying that “without additional spectrum, by 2014 U.S. wireless consumers will not have enough spectrum available to fuel their devices.” What is your source for this comment?

Aside from these details, I agree with much of the thrust of the post that mobile broadband is important and will become more so, U.S. spectrum policy should be reformed and improved, and we need should take a hard look at government spectrum use. It should be easier to repurpose spectrum.

TV spectrum, in 6MHz swaths has little relative capacity, why would that article not discuss this, and what % is Broadcast vs Government? The article forgot emerging technologies such as Lucent’s microcells, and the effect they will have on spectrum efficiencies. Our technology sector deserves more crdit! In addition to super growing WiFi, what effect would other unlicensed spectrum have? Let’s learn from history, this is a finite resource or LAND GRAB and all the facts and other POVs should be revealed before proselytising to the uninitiated or uninformed.

The Indians are not attacking, calm down. This article was obviously meant to help achieve an objective; to get land (spectrum) transferred to a certain sponsor(s). I’d listen to Martin Cooper, the inventor of the cell phone, who says the carrier’s claims of a spectrum crisis is highly exaggerated. But what some individual’s won’t do for land has not been historically determined!

Having said that, the wireless operators are among the most hated and most distrusted companies in America. That doesn’t happen by accident.

Before ANY more wireless spectrum is allocated to the wireless operators, I think we the people, represented by our elected government, need to see plans to address the issues of greatest consumer dissatisfaction. Off of the top of my head, here are a few:

1. Price gouging. The most blatant example is the price charged for SMS messaging. When we know how badly we’re being gouged for SMS, it destroys customer loyalty and trust.

2. Data capping. I don’t believe that data caps are required for the mainstream wireless user. There may be a tiny fraction of abusers, but I believe it’s tiny. In my view data-capping is the new mechanism being set up to replace the price gouging for SMS messaging. Why do I think this? Because the way data capping is implemented, it doesn’t address the problem of network overload. If network congestion was truly the problem, we’d see throttling (and incentives) to protect peak usage times. Remember when we used to pay for long distance voice and it cost more during weekdays and less at night and on week-ends? Rated data plans would be more effective at addressing congestion than capped data plans, but capped data plans make more money because everyone pays the prime-time rate for the data they use.

3. Charging for data more than once. The wireless operator charges me $x for 2GB of data. If I choose to tether an independent device to use that data that I’ve paid for, the operator charges me more. That’s like Exxon charging more if you plan to use some of their gasoline in both your car and your lawnmower.

4. Service selection. I don’t use telco voice. In the period that I owned my previous iPhone, I didn’t use up even 1 month of my voice plan limit. Before we worry about the need for additional bandwidth, how about if we find out how many unused minutes like mine are included in the operators current forecasted requirements. I know some people use voice constantly (it seems like many suburban warriors cars and SUVs won’t start unless their phones are pressed to their ears), but I know there are many people like me too. I don’t want to pay for services I don’t use, nor do I want to worry about allocating additional bandwidth to the carriers if they really don’t need it.

The airwaves belong to all of us. I think the wireless operators need to come forward with a plan to improve our collective satisfaction with their services before we think about allocating any more of our bandwidth to them.