http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/us-to-free-some-federal-spectrum-for-wireless-broadband-use.arsIn its zeal to provide more spectrum to the mobile broadband sector, the United States government will tap into its own considerable spectrum holdings, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced on Monday.
"Without public action to free up both Federal and non-Federal spectrum for emerging wireless uses, there is a risk that America may fall behind other countries in the wireless broadband revolution," a new report from the NTIA warns.
NTIA spectrum boss Larry Strickling released a sneak preview about this move several weeks ago. Government spectrum transfers will include some of the regions licensed to guide weather balloons, altimeters, and Defense Department military testing sites.
But that just totals about 115MHz of bandwidth—plenty shy of the 500MHz the government thinks the wireless industry needs to serve the huge demand for data-hungry smartphones.
This new report spotlights more than 2200MHz of Federal and non-Federal spectrum that NTIA and the Federal Communications Commission think could conceivably be transferred over to broadband use.
The FCC recently published a new white paper which projects mobile use and growth over the next half decade. The agency expects 2009 mobile data traffic to grow by a factor of five by 2011, by a factor of 20 by 2013, and by 35 by 2014.
To put it in more concrete terms:
42 percent of consumers are estimated to own a smartphone; that's up from 16 percent three years ago
PC aircard users consume 1.4GB per month—56 times the amount of data used by a regular cell phone
AT&T, the exclusive US carrier of the iPhone (for now), has seen mobile network traffic increase 5,000 percent over the past three years
Clearwire's fourth generation (4G) WiMAX service subscribers gobble up 7GB per month—280 times the amount of data used by a regular cell phone.
It's not perfect, but it should improve things.
