Mobile data traffic in the United States will be 35 times higher in 2014 than it was in 2009, leading to a massive wireless spectrum shortage if the government fails to make more available, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said in a paper released October 2010. About 42 percent of U.S. mobile customers now own a smartphone, up from 16 percent 3 years ago, and between the first quarter of 2009 and the second quarter of 2010, data use per mobile line grew by 450 percent, the paper said.
The FCC expects smartphone use — and a corresponding increase in mobile data use — to continue to skyrocket, the FCC Chairman said. "If we don’t act to update our spectrum policies for the 21st century, we’re going to run into a wall — a spectrum crunch — that will stifle American innovation and economic growth and cost us the opportunity to lead the world in mobile communications," he warned. In a national broadband plan released in March 2010, the FCC called for 300 MHz of spectrum to be made available for mobile broadband uses in the next 5 years, and an additional 200 MHz in the subsequent 5 years.
Much of that spectrum would come from bands now controlled by the FCC or other government agencies, but 120 MHz would come from spectrum now owned but unused by U.S. television stations. Under the broadband plan, the stations would give back unused spectrum in exchange for part of the profits when the spectrum is sold at auction. The FCC would need congressional approval to hold these so-called incentive auctions.
Source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/352502/FCC_Wireless_Spectrum_Shortage_Looms?taxonomyId=70
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