Government Computer News
Solving the spectrum squeeze (Unabridged version)
Future of IT: We need new approaches and new technology to make the most of a finite resource
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Editors Note
This is the unabridged version of an article that appeared in GCN’s Dec. 10, 2007 issue.
We’ve all seen and been part of the explosion of mobile and wireless services in the commercial market. Statistics from CTIA, the international wireless association, show that the number of wireless subscribers within the U.S. has grown nearly ten fold in 12 years, to 208 million in June of 2007. In just the past two years, the number of subscribers swelled by 50 million. More telling, the proportion of wireless-only households in the U.S. has reached nearly 13 percent. That’s a huge shift.
Globally, wireless adoption in countries such as India and China has grown even faster than in the U.S. A staggering 2.5 billion subscribers were using mobile phones based on the GSM standard (the most commonly deployed digital cellular standard) as of June 2007; that number will reach 3 billion by 2009. Bandwidth demand is not just for voice, but for significant increases in data and multi-media applications. The commercial appetite for spectrum has grown so dramatically that when the U.S. government auctioned off spectrum for advanced wireless services last year, some 107 licensees paid approximately $14 billion to secure more than 1000 licenses.
Government Spectrum Demands
Communication, however, is just one aspect of the demands on spectrum. From the military’s perspectives, there are serious concerns about spectrum requirements for radar, sensors, navigation, and a whole slew of capabilities that war fighters depend on. Spectrum conflicts on the battle field, especially when coordinating with coalition forces, can have lethal consequences. The military and the government are also using wireless for security systems, intrusion detections, video surveillance, sensors that detect biohazards for instance and report them back to control centers.
Estimates discussed at the recent World Radiocommunications Conference suggest that next generation wireless, or International mobile telecommunications (IMT) advance, will require as much as 1gigahertz (GHz) in additional spectrum. That’s a tall order given the desire to operate below the 5GHz band, which is best suited for this type of communication, but which is also the most congested spectrum across the world.
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