FCC planning to release 300MHz of spectrum to carriers by 2015

Speaking yesterday at the University of Pennsylvania, chairman of the FCC Julius Genachowski explained how he plans to release another 300MHz of wireless spectrum to high speed wireless carriers by 2015. A large portion of the spectrum will be auctioned off in the AWS (Advanced Wireless Services) band, which isn't exactly what you'd call "prime real estate", but is where AT&T currently operates some LTE and T-Mobile has historically ran its HSPA+ network. New chunks of AWS being available could give a much-needed boost to these networks.

We hear a lot about spectrum nowadays -- who has it? who doesn't? why does it matter? -- but the real takeaway here is that more spectrum being available for carriers to use is a good thing. It essentially means that carriers will have more room to allocate bandwidth to devices, especially in major metropolitan areas where its quite apparent that these networks are oversaturated

Source: FCC (pdf); via Slashdot

Andrew Martonik

Andrew was an Executive Editor, U.S. at Android Central between 2012 and 2020.