New Tech Can Handle The Spectrum Crunch…For Now

Here’s a new take on the spectrum-crunch situation. Comments Stéphane Téral, principal analyst/Mobile Infrastructure and Carrier Economics at Infonetics Research, "Seven years ago, the ITU predicted the world would need twice as much radio frequency spectrum as is allocated now, and that was even before the advent of the data-hungry iPhone. But if the ITU forecast had held true, all mobile networks with significant mobile broadband usage would have crashed by now." The group notes HSPA+ and LTE are two of the primary reasons operators have been able to squeeze more and more bits out of limited spectrum, and Wi-Fi offload also may be helping, with Infonetics saying as much as 7 percent of mobile-device data traffic is on Wi-Fi. However, countries with heavy mobile broadband usage, including the United States, South Korea, and Japan, are on track to need 1,000 megahertz of new spectrum by 2017.