What if you called a bandwidth crunch and no one came?

... asks Ajit Jaokar over at OpenGardens in a recent blog entry. The post is a great collection of thoughts of why the spectrum crunch, so often cited these days to be happening in the US might actually be a myth. I would even go so far as to argue that there is no bandwidth crunch at all. About a year ago, I've been comparing the amount of spectrum available to US carriers and the amount of spectrum available in Europe. For the details see here. In summary, the amount of spectrum available on both sides of the Atlantic is about the same but we certainly don't suffer from any bandwidth crunch over here in Europe, we are actually far from it in networks that are well dimensioned. Here's an example. So whatever the reasons are for slow networks in the US it's not a lack of spectrum. For additional background reading, here are two interesting posts from Dean Bubley on the topic, flattening data growth and O2 UK's data usage patterns.

Comments

[David Boettger]

There is no doubt that American carriers' gripes about a bandwidth crunch are self-serving. But clearly the tariff regime is a not-trivial factor in spectrum occupancy. In the U.S., it is not unusual for subscribers to have all-you-can-eat data plans. This contrasts with Europe, in which (I think?) most data usage is metered and sometimes (France) extremely expensive -- resulting in lower overall data usage.