The United States has fewer spectrums per smartphone subscriber/user than most other developed nations, pushing an utmost need for additional frequency allocations as well as the use of spectrum-conserving solutions, according to the trade association 4G Americas. The group directed to a study from CTIA (a wireless convention held earlier this month in New Orleans), which reported that as of mid-2011 the United States served 788,000 subscribers per MHz of spectrum, nearly double the efficiency of any other country, and yet the nation only has 50 MHz of usable spectrum in the pipeline, which isn’t a lot.
“With limited amounts of spectrum and growing mobile broadband data demands, today’s networks are increasingly becoming stressed to capacity,” said Chris Pearson, 4G Americas president. “More spectrum is the ultimate answer for network congestion as growth in mobile broadband will come to a hard stop without it.”
The group recently issued a report addressing some short-term and long-term solutions that can be implemented by application developers, mobile OS vendors and end users to address increasingly signaling and network data traffic congestion while the industry awaits new spectrum allocations.
