http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c355e810-b378-11de-ae8d-00144feab49a.html
By Joseph Menn in San Francisco and Chris Nuttall in San Diego Published: October 7 2009 20:53 | Last updated: October 7 2009 20:53 The head of the US Federal Communications Commission warned on Wednesday that there is not enough room in the airwaves for the "explosion" in wireless data traffic, setting the stage for a big realignment of spectrum usage as the government tries to help mobile carriers keep up with consumer demand. "The biggest threat to the future of mobile in America is the looming spectrum crisis," said Julius Genachowski, the Obama administration appointee who took over as head of the five-member FCC in late June. Mr Genachowski noted that what had been seen as a big auction of spectrum last year helped cap a three-fold surge in the amount of commercial spectrum available. "The problem is, many anticipate a 30-fold increase in wireless traffic," he said at the CTIA wireless industry convention in San Diego. The forum was designed to mend bridges with the industry, which was upset by the FCC's recent declaration that carriers should be stopped from favouring some types of internet traffic over others. On Tuesday, that stance prompted AT&T to allow voice-over-internet calls from iPhones. "This is a clarion call to wake up the troops, to wake up the world and get people to focus," said telecom policy analyst Rebecca Arbogast of Stifel Nicolaus. As an indicator of the bottleneck ahead, AT&T has been overwhelmed with a 5,000 per cent increase in wireless data consumption in three years, driven by the minority of customers who own Apple's iPhone. For now, AT&T is the exclusive US carrier for that device. "We're seeing a disproportionate number of users driving consumption," Ralph de la Vega, AT&T Mobility president, said at the conference. "If we don't find a way to keep them from crowding out others, we're going to have a very significant issue." Mr de la Vega said the top 3 per cent of its smartphone customers were responsible for 40 per cent of data usage, consuming 13 times more than the average smartphone user. With new smartphones that have software from Google and others coming, and the prospects of wider distribution of broadband-enabled notebook PCs, the demands for connectivity will continue to jump geometrically. "AT&T is the canary in the coal mine," Ms Arbogast said. Mr Genachowski said the needed bandwidth must come from multiple places, including promising new technologies like "smart antennas" and femtocells. The government itself will have to give up some of the spectrum it has reserved for various agencies, which use those parts of the airwaves sparingly. In addition, the multi-year process of reallocation, in which spectrum that has been given over to one commercial use gets reclaimed and resold for other uses, must also get under way. The FCC has said it is looking for ways to measure what spectrum usage is serving the public best. The agency wants a system of incentives that would induce spectrum owners to return what they are not using. "We must identify spectrum that can best be reinvested in mobile broadband," Mr Genachowski said. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. *********************************** * POST TO MEDIANEWS@ETSKYWARN.NET * *********************************** Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews