First off, nobody is claiming there is a spectrum shortage TODAY. The predictions of spectrum shortage are based on traffic growth forecasts by Cisco and many others, which put the growth in the range of a 70-100% compound annual growth rate. Apply that traffic growth rate to the available spectrum and the spectrum gets fully consumed some years out. It's just math.
(All the various ways that growth rate could be slowed down relative to spectrum consumption is a different discussion, and is not made as part of that article either)
If those forecasts prove to be correct and applicable worldwide, there will be a spectrum shortage in EVERY country, in the not too distant future. It's the dense urban areas, which exist in every country, where the shortage first becomes apparent. If the forecasts are too high, that just pushes out the timeline.
Assigning spectrum is a multi-year, multi-step process. You don't start it when there is already trouble, because the trouble will just compound over the years as the process works itself through. So you have to start the process now, and make some assumptions.
Users consume spectrum at whatever rate they do (until such time as there are onerous restrictions put in place). There is currently 170MHz of spectrum that is widely deployed and in heavy use in the US (Citi says 192MHz but I think they are counting Verizon's 700MHz C block which is no where near widely deployed OR heavily used so it doesn't count in that spectrum bucket ), yet users are not generally suffering effects of congestion.
So I would say in general the carriers have deployed (spent capex) at about the right pace from a business perspective, and been able to detect when they need to add capacity and have done so. It would be a stupid business decision to deploy all the 538 MHz the article says is being hoarded, if it won't be consumed and mostly sits idle. That's not to mention that 538MHz includes many new bands and covering all those makes for more expensive radios (user equipment) and dynamic band swtiching, which users would surely be complaining about if things had been deployed that way.
PS I'm not arguing how the various alternative approaches to spectrum could change things. I'm just arguing what I feel are flaws in the article's argument, along the lines it is argued. |
