Federal Communications Commission chair Julius Genachowski unveiled his MBA (Mobile Broadband Agenda) today at the CTIA wireless conference in San Diego.
"I believe that the biggest threat to the future of mobile in America is the looming spectrum crisis," Genachowski said.
Plans for the MBA include loosening regulations to ensure faster cell tower construction, freeing up more of the radio spectrum for wireless data, fact-based decision making, and applying net neutrality regulations to wireless carriers.
And if Genachowski’s prediction of 400 petabytes of monthly wireless bandwidth usage by 2013 is accurate, there may well be an oncoming crisis. Just one petabyte is equivalent to 1,048,576 gigabytes, or 1,024 terabytes. To put it more simply, 400 petabytes would be the size of at least 44,62,000 DVDs.
One of Genachowski’s ideas to stem the crisis is “shot clock” reform that would dramatically cut the time communities would have to protest new tower construction.
Ideally, this would speed up the deployment of new towers. Combined with additional cellular airspace, the rollout of next-generation 4G wireless broadband networks would be on track to handle the massive influx of data.
But assuming Genachowski can enact his agenda, would it even be enough?