What does your smartphone have in common with Henry Ford’s Model T? Quite a bit, according to LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja. Both the smartphone and the Model T may be innovations that have changed the way society operates, and just as the automobile altered the American landscape by creating a demand for roads and highways, smartphones and tablets are creating an enormous need for bandwidth to carry video, voice and data.
“Demand for data will increase 50-fold over the next four years,” says Ahuja. Academic industry observers agree with that prediction. “The amount of data is just skyrocketing,” says Jeff Andrews, director of the University of Texas’ Wireless Networking and Communications Group. “Operators are looking at what amounts to almost a shutdown of their networks during peak hours in large markets.”
Last month, the Federal Communications Commission warned that tablet computers will increase the data explosion by a factor of more than 100. The FCC warned of an impending spectrum crunch almost a year ago, saying, “If we don’t act to update our spectrum policies for the 21st century, we’re going to run into a wall — a spectrum crunch — that will stifle American innovation and economic growth and cost us the opportunity to lead the world in mobile communications.”
In an effort to follow through on the imperative to update policies, the U.S. government agreed early this year to let LighSquared use spectrum in the MSS (Mobile Satellite Service) band for its network, provided the company first resolve potential interference with GPS navigation systems that use nearby spectrum. LightSquared is trying to become a bandwidth wholesaler, selling “dumb pipes” to carriers that will in turn sell service to consumers. This week at Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco, Ahuja said the U.S. could run out of network capacity within three years.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceyESB8560s
The upper band allocated to LightSquared sits beside the band used by GPS, and the lower band is sometimes used by satellite services that enhance GPS signals. Initial tests in the upper band found massive interference with GPS, so LightSquared has said it will focus on the lower band frequencies for now.
