During the recession, mobile technology was one of the only sectors to experience innovation and growth. Now we might be using wireless spectrum sales to help get out of debt.
It’s amazing how mobile technologies are influencing not only our personal and work lives but also our society as a whole.
It’s probably a topic for another day, but sociologists will I’m sure be researching the impact of the mobile communications and technology revolution fifty years from now. They already are, although it’s still too early to see the true effects.
But anyway, mobile technologies are having a direct, real impact on our economy during this difficult time.
According to mobiThinking.com, there are 5.3 billion mobile phone users worldwide. There’s only 7 billion people on the entire planet, so that number is significant to say the least.
Information technology research firm Gartner reports that consumers bought 417 million mobile phones in the third quarter of 2010 alone—actually a 35 percent increase from the third quarter of 2009. (Smartphone sales were up 96 percent from the same time the year before.)
“This is the third consecutive double-digit increase in sales year-on-year, indicating that consumer demand is healthy,” said Gartner’s Carolina Milanesi.
According to international wireless association CTIA, total wireless revenues worldwide in 2010 were $160 billion. As of December 2010, the wireless industry had over 250,000 direct service provider employees worldwide.
We’re talking big business here. In fact, so big it might help us with our debt in a very direct way.
As new wireless networks have come out over the years (1G, 2G, 3G, 4G), countries have used sales of network rights to raise money. Britain raised $22.5 billion in a 3G auction in 2000. Portugal is hoping to use a 4G auction in the first quarter of 2012 to help get out of debt (including bailout debt).
So Congress is thinking of auctioning wireless spectrum here in the U.S. to help us do the same as Portugal. There’s a question of whether selling more spectrum will clog the network, which I’m sure is coming up in the debates. No one wants that. But debt help would certainly be beneficial.
