{"id":13858,"date":"2011-09-16T20:13:41","date_gmt":"2011-09-16T20:13:41","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-09-16T20:13:41","modified_gmt":"2011-09-16T20:13:41","slug":"spectrum-scarcity-and-the-consumer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2011\/09\/16\/spectrum-scarcity-and-the-consumer\/","title":{"rendered":"Spectrum Scarcity and the Consumer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Can you imagine having to wait your turn to make a mobile phone call? It may seem like a far-fetched concept, but it&#8217;s a practical reality in many large urban areas where completing a call during peak times has become a frustrating challenge. After years of double digit growth, the nation&#8217;s wireless networks simply don&#8217;t have enough capacity on their towers to support the more than 300 million mobile devices in this country.<\/p>\n<p>This spectrum shortage has been compounded by the popularity of smart phones, which use 24 times more wireless capacity than a regular handset. Wireless tablets, such as an iPad, use five times as much as a smartphone, and netbooks send and receive four times as much data as a tablet. It&#8217;s easy to see how all those videos, photos and Facebook updates are clogging our nation&#8217;s networks and leading to dropped calls and no service signals.<\/p>\n<p>The trend towards more network congestion is clear, and that&#8217;s not good news for consumers who are used to technology advancements providing faster speeds and lower prices. But the nation&#8217;s wireless networks are not keeping up with the rapid advancement of our mobile devices. Rather than keep up with demand, Verizon and AT&#038;T have begun to ration their customers. Both companies recently stopped offering unlimited wireless plans, meaning that it will cost subscribers more to access the same services.<\/p>\n<p>LightSquared is poised to help alleviate the problem by putting a huge new chunk of airwaves to use. We plan to build a 4G-LTE network that will provide world-class connectivity in urban and rural America. LightSquared&#8217;s wholesale model will give a host of different companies &#8211; from regional wireline providers to retailers to device manufacturers &#8211; the opportunity to offer competitively-priced wireless services while providing the same or better speeds and features as the national carriers. LightSquared is what our nation&#8217;s wireless consumers need now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can you imagine having to wait your turn to make a mobile phone call? It may seem like a far-fetched concept, but it&#8217;s a practical reality in many large urban areas where completing a call during peak times has become a frustrating challenge. After years of double digit growth, the nation&#8217;s wireless networks simply don&#8217;t have enough capacity on their towers to support the more than 300 million mobile devices in this country.<\/p>\n<p>This spectrum shortage has been compounded by the popularity of smart phones, which use 24 times more wireless capacity than a regular handset. Wireless tablets, such as an iPad, use five times as much as a smartphone, and netbooks send and receive four times as much data as a tablet. It&#8217;s easy to see how all those videos, photos and Facebook updates are clogging our nation&#8217;s networks and leading to dropped calls and no service signals.<\/p>\n<p>The trend towards more network congestion is clear, and that&#8217;s not good news for consumers who are used to technology advancements providing faster speeds and lower prices. But the nation&#8217;s wireless networks are not keeping up with the rapid advancement of our mobile devices. Rather than keep up with demand, Verizon and AT&#038;T have begun to ration their customers. Both companies recently stopped offering unlimited wireless plans, meaning that it will cost subscribers more to access the same services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6089,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[87],"tags":[138,978,10118,77,2714,10099],"class_list":["post-13858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-87","tag-138","tag-978","tag-10118","tag-77","tag-2714","tag-10099"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-3Bw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6089"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}