Proliferation of Wireless Devices Requires Robust Broadband Connections

A new report by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) found that the "number of wireless devices are skyrocketing".

The current generation of wireless devices are "becoming more useful and technologically advanced," according to the study. In the past two years the number of devices with three or more transmitters — accommodating Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and other types of connections in addition to cellular — has increased by 700 percent.

But this explosion in the use of wireless technology is testing the limits of our current networks' capacity. Not only are there more and more wireless devices, but each of them is consuming more and more data, including video. Engineers continue to develop ways to get more efficiency out of the spectrum that wireless devices use to transmit data, including 4G technologies like LTE (long-term evolution). Spectrum has a finite capacity, however, and significant amounts of data must eventually be fed into the network through the wired backhaul that connects cell towers to the greater network.

Former Chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology at the Federal Communications Commission, Dale Hatfield, argues that no matter what technology is used, we need to expand high-capacity fiber closer to the end user and drastically increase the total number of access nodes. Simply put, the closer that a data user is to a high-speed fiber connection, and the sooner that data can get in the fiber, the better that user's service will be and the more efficiently the network ecosystem operates. For wireless, this would mean adding many more cell towers, causing the size of individual cells to shrink dramatically. Because each cell is connected to the rest of the network with wired backhaul, once data enters the wire, the spectrum that the data was carried on is free to be used by other devices. Overall, this increases speed and capacity on the wireless network. Therefore, the challenges our wireless networks face because of the dramatic increase in data traffic are reduced by building out a robust high-speed wire network. To further alleviate additional pressure on our spectrum, home and business users can switch to terrestrial Internet access, putting data directly into the wire and taking it off the licensed airwaves entirely.

The National Broadband Plan aims to connect all Americans to broadband, bridging the digital divide and ensuring that every person, business and community has access and can use high speed Internet no matter a person's location or income.

From the FCC Lab: Report On Trends in Wireless Devices

Dale Hatfield: The Challenge of Increasing Broadband Capacity

The Network Paradox Part 2: Meeting the Mobile Data Demand

Why Connecting the Unconnected to Broadband Helps Everyone on the Network