IoT is running out of wireless spectrum
Could an incentive auction be the solution?
Two big waves in the wireless world are driving the need for more spectrum, the radio signals that carry data to our phones, tablets and other mobile devices: mobile video and the ever-expanding IoT. In the coming years, the increasing number of devices and the nature of traffic will require far more wireless spectrum than is commercially available today.
In an opinion piece published by Computerworld on June 3, Bret Swanson—president of Entropy Economics LLC—argued that allocating the spectrum via an incentive auction is the surest route to meeting the government’s goal of unleashing 500 megahertz of new spectrum by 2020, and launching the next waves of mobile innovation.
Swanson walks us through the complexities of such an auction, the role of the FCC in it all, and what it could mean for the IoT as a whole.