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A new report warns that the exploding usage of radio waves by broadband-devouring smartphones and video threatens to deplete a finite wireless spectrum.
“If you look at traffic patterns over the past five years, we went from things like illegal music downloads, to legal music downloads, to video,” said technology adviser and report author Michael Kleeman at University of California San Diego. “Video is the primary driver of Internet usage in the United States.”
The movie DVD and streaming service Netflix is responsible for nearly a third of the Internet usage in the United States, but it’s the mass migration from wired to wireless networks that will push an already burdened system over the brink, according the report, titled “Point of View: Wireless Point of Disconnect.”
According to the report, the volume of data traffic on U.S. networks will increase by 1,800 percent over the next four years, and mobile video will account for two-thirds of data traffic worldwide. A separate prediction from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has America’s spectrum deficit happening as soon as 2013.
“Streaming traffic, like Netflix movies, differs from voice or email traffic in that it is a constant demand for a long time,” the report stated. It’s “as if 30 percent of drivers rushed out and traded in our ‘voice’ cars for massive 18-wheeled ‘data’ trucks, blocking traffic and pushing other cars off the road everywhere we went.”
Released by corporate-sponsored think-tank Global Information Industry Center at UC San Diego, the study comprises secondary research based on data from the FCC and mobile carriers. The methodology was not included in the paper.
Most people don’t think of the wireless spectrum as a limited resource, but it draws on finite radio waves that are constantly being recycled within each “circle” or geographical area, Kleeman explained.
Before cellular, a framework of different channels protected nearby stations from interference. Now, a signal is re-used hundreds of times in the same city so that everyone gets capacity, Kleeman said.
“So in theory it’s possible for users to prevent other users from getting service,” he said.
Snail-pace downloads and reception failures may not cry “crisis” in the same way that a food or water shortage does. But their blow to commerce, social activity, and the ability to make a successful 911 call is already forcing carriers like AT&T to increase its prices for services that used to have a flat rate.
Unlike fiber optic networks, the wireless network cannot double in capacity by simply adding electronics. And even if it could do that at the miniscule costs afforded by fiber, its ability to send high-speed data can’t keep up with what consumers have become accustomed to.
“We’ve been spoiled. …What you can get on the landline is almost impossible to get on today’s mobile at any price, and even if you could, they’d turn you down because you’d be blocking others,” Kleeman said.
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3 Comments
Add CommentWired networks experienced a similar "explosion" a while ago, and it took some time to get ahead of it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople now can have a 35Mbs or 100Mbs link to their House, for less than $100 per month, where companies in 1995 paid thousands per month for the same speed.
With compression and other techniques wireless will do the same.
Hmmm. Seems like the same concerns surrounded wired internet during the last decade. Yet somehow bandwidth supply managed to keep up. The how was technological advances and a free market. The same will likely occur with wireless.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA Canadian regional cable operator Shaw has solved the spectrum issue by using wifi for its mobile phone offering forgoing the massive investment it made a few years buying wireless spectrum.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHaving already covered the entire region with fiber, it will cost them under a buck a subscriber one time cost to add wifi repeaters as needed.
The regional public power company BCHydro has an even more comprehensive fiber structure as part of its new smart meter build.
Its distribution system is comprised of over 2 million customers, on 57,000 kilometres of distribution lines, spread out over 900K power poles or about 60 meters a pole.
The cost of covering that 57K km with the fibre optic cable necessary for smart meters is about $1200 a Km.or $70M. For an additional $20M ( a few more strands) that fibre cable could be expanded to bring 1000 Mb/s access at sufficient capacity to handle all the communication traffic telephone, cellular, television, and internet its 2 Million customers generate.
Adding a maximum of one 300Mbs capacity outdoor boxed Dual band N router running the open-mesh system at $200 each every 2 poles would add $90M or so. Customers could access the wireless with their own equipment, buy new Open-Mesh units for $50, or demand wired access at 1000 Mb/s for $100.
Mass produced white space WIF routers at 20 Mbs along the route could provide slower but still very fast by todays standard wireless service traveling for tens of miles and penetrating buildings for a miminal additional cost.
So around $50 one time charge, every BCHydro customer in the entire province could have a best in the world 1000 Mbs communication channel internet with wired customer internet connections shared with wired smart meters, and out in the street wireless replacing cell phones.
Translated to the entire US this would cost abbout $6B to blanket the entire US with 100 Mbs Wifi with 1 GigE available in cities towns and villages for a $100 one time drop fee. This is slightly more than the crooks at the FAA are paying Big Telecom every year to provide (not) rural telephone service.
Obviously, this would put Big Telecom out of business, interfering with campaign donations and post political board of director appointments for our corrupt politicians, so it ain't a gonna happen.
At least the cable company could easily put the cell phone companies out of business, doing us all a favor by freeing up the vast amount of spectrum wasted by these thieving marauders.
Call your local politicians and demand an answer as to why they sold out.