Julius Genachowski, the head of America’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has called wireless spectrum “the oxygen that sustains our mobile devices”. Yet unlike oxygen, the airwaves over which telecoms companies transmit their wireless signals are in ever shorter supply. According to the FCC’s calculations, America needs to make 300 megahertz (MHz) of additional spectrum available by 2014 to avoid a “crunch” that drives up consumers’ mobile-phone bills and holds back innovation.Some critics reckon the regulator’s projections are too pessimistic. But telecoms firms say an explosion of wireless data triggered by smartphones and tablet computers is indeed soaking up capacity fast. Hence the scramble for more airwaves. On December 2nd Verizon Wireless, the country’s largest mobile operator, announced a $3.6 billion deal to buy spectrum from several cable-television companies. AT&T, another telecoms behemoth, has been telling anyone who will listen that its $39 billion bid for T-Mobile USA, a smaller rival, should be approved in part because it would ease a capacity headache: AT&T has plenty of capital but needs more spectrum, while T-Mobile has the airwaves but lacks the capital to exploit them fully.To read this report in The Economist in full, see
www.economist.com/node/21541415