Betting Against Technology

Yes, it is manifestly true that, led by the iPhone, of course, wireless Internet-enabled devices are chewing up bandwidth on 3G and other cellular networks at an unprecedented rate. But is that really a crisis? FCC Chairman Warns of “Looming Spectrum Crisis” for Wireless Devices.

I’ve got a lot of respect for Julius Genachowski. But on this point, I suggest he is all wet. Look at the historical parallels. Thomas Malthus warned more than 200 years ago of a food crisis as the industrial revolution expanded populations, and that did not happen either. In wireless data, the technology has advanced by an order of magnitude in just the past 3-4 years, like fiber optics using WDM to cram more capacity into the same amount of bandwidth. What is 3g today is almost 4G in Japan and other nations.

So don’t bet against technology. Increased efficiency in wireless data protocols — OFDM, for instance — trumps spectrum capacity all the time.

Posted via email from glenn’s posterous