Since the late 1990s, America’s wireless economy has faced a serious credit crunch, digital style, due to a series of regulatory impasses that have reduced the flow of new radio spectrum to a trickle. That has placed rising burdens on existing mobile communications networks and led many carriers to postpone next generation, multi-media services.
On November 7, however, the nation’s top "spectrum banker," the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), began to provide some relief by allocating 90 MHz of new spectrum for so-called Third Generation (3G) advanced wireless services. The FCC’s action reflects a historic band-clearing agreement with the Department of Defense and, with the prior reallocation of several UHF TV channels, might lead to the sale in 2003-2005 of over three times the amount of mobile radio spectrum now licensed for cellular telephone service. See Figure 1.
