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August 28, 2012 By News Staff
A new infographic is providing a realistic look at the demand for mobile connectivity and the limited space on the airwaves that's available to accommodate consumers.
Called “Growing Demand for Wireless Spectrum,” the infographic shows that the U.S. government has assigned less than 16 percent of the airwaves between 400 MHz and 3 GHz for commercial wireless broadband services. In contrast, the remaining spectrum — nearly 85 percent — is occupied mostly by TV broadcasters and government agencies.
“Rapidly growing adoption and limited spectrum resources is a losing combination for the 330 million wireless connections used by American consumers,” said Jonathan Spalter, chairman of Mobile Future, the coalition that released the infographic, in a statement. “With consumers already starting to see the affects from near capacity mobile networks, it is critical that government act swiftly and responsibly to free up more spectrum to help keep pace with exploding consumer demand for wireless connectivity.”
According to Mobile Future, 3 billion networked devices are expected in the U.S. by 2016, which translates to more than nine devices for every person. Cisco also predicts that U.S. mobile data traffic will grow 16 fold by 2016. Despite the FCC estimating that mobile demand will exceed available spectrum by 2013, spectrum allocation has not kept up accordingly.
Check out the infographic below.
![Growing Demand for Wireless Spectrum [Infographic]](http://mobilefuture.org/page/-/images/growing-demand-for-wireless-spectrum.png)
You may use or reference this story with attribution and a link to
http://www.govtech.com/wireless/Future-Looks-Bleak-for-Mobile-Spectrum-Infographic.html
What a bunch of FUD. I like how you threw in TV broadcasters a part of the 85% when their amount is just 8.5% about HALF of what mobile companies currently have. TV broadcasters have already given up 198 MHz to mobile over the years. Quit asking for more.
Cellular carriers have plenty of spectrum. They just choose to use it inefficiently. When an area becomes congested regularly, they're supposed to build more towers and subdivide it into smaller cells and re-use the spectrum that they already have. That's why it's called CELLULAR. But the carriers choose not to, because that would actually cause them to have to spend money, rather than pocketing obscene profits on the bills we pay every month on substandard infrastructure.