The State of Wireless

By Brad

Over at PC World, Mark Sullivan examines the current state of wireless in America and finds, for the most part, good news:

In general, the major wireless carriers appear to be keeping pace with the explosion in demand for mobile data service. The 3G service that most of us use today is at least as fast as it was a year ago, even though far more subscribers are tapping the networks with increasingly data-hungry devices. And a new generation of much faster 4G wireless service is quickly becoming commonplace in the country’s more populous areas.

“Our research shows that the demand on mobile broadband networks is nearly doubling every year, so there is definitely no room to remain idle” said Dan Hays, U.S. advisory wireless leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). “The results of this year’s PCWorld study clearly show that most wireless network operators are continuing to invest significantly in their 3G networks, adding capacity to ensure that speeds remain competitive.”

While it’s great that wireless providers continue to invest heavily in their networks, that traffic nearly doubling every year stat from PricewaterhouseCoopers is troubling. Without more spectrum, the industry agrees, keeping up with demand will only become increasingly difficult — no matter how much they invest. And that could spell doom in next year’s PC World survey.