|
| AUTHOR |
MESSAGE |
|
User no longer registered.
|
Running out of airwaves?
Copy and Paste excerpt from an article I read this morning.
The U.S. mobile phone industry is running out of the airwaves necessary to provide voice, text and Internet services to its customers.
The problem, known as the "spectrum crunch," threatens to increase the number of dropped calls, slow down data speeds and raise customers' prices. It will also whittle down the nation's number of wireless carriers and create a deeper financial divide between those companies that have capacity and those that don't.
Wireless spectrum -- the invisible infrastructure over which all wireless transmissions travel -- is a finite resource. When, exactly, we'll hit the wall is the subject of intense debate, but almost everyone in the industry agrees that a crunch is coming.
The U.S. still has a slight spectrum surplus. But at the current growth rate, the surplus turns into a deficit as early as next year, according to the Federal Communications Commission's estimates.
"Network traffic is increasing," says an official at the FCC's wireless bureau. "[Carriers] can manage it for the next couple years, but demand is inevitably going to exceed the available spectrum."
|
| February 21, 2012, 16:52 |
|
User no longer registered.
|
Re: Running out of airwaves?
Of all the 2012 and end of times prophecies, I did not consider there could be a time in the near future where we would have to live and survive in a world of people freakin' out over dropped calls, slow downloads and twitter withdrawals.
|
| February 21, 2012, 16:54 |
|
kamarel
60 / male
Alexandria, Louisiana, US
|
Re: Running out of airwaves?
I still think I want to retire to a cave.
|
| February 22, 2012, 11:55 |
|
User no longer registered.
|
Re: Running out of airwaves?
Of all the greater good our technology can bring us, it's a shame that the finite resource of the wireless sprectrum is gonna be totally chewed up with several thousand trillion wher u ats and lols
|
| February 22, 2012, 21:22 |
|
User no longer registered.
|
Re: Running out of airwaves?
Oh, so that's what excuse they're using now for all the dropped calls.
|
| February 23, 2012, 02:21 |
|
|
