Will embracing the "New" actually take us two steps Back..?

From what I'm seeing in the news, it looks as if the demand for wireless bandwidth is creating tangible growing pains on the street.  As the insatiable appetite for more sophisticated phones, connectivity and apps blossoms, and as more users seek those "goodies" (and as technology drives price points down) the standing wireless communications infrastructure that makes it all work is being saturated.  It's not that the wireless service providers aren't trying to augment and expand their infrastructure -- it's more that the demand is accelerating and for now, is impossible to catch.

Sprint and T-Mobile are doing the consolidation dance again...and I'd argue that consolidation makes sense in this environment -- we should expect it from others as well - because it takes a certain critical mass in terms of network infrastructure "density" to serve today's wireless data demands.  It's difficult to provide great service, when the data pipes are too small and there are too many customers with phones that pull too much data for the system to accommodate.  That could be part of Verizon's problems as well...While they arguably have the best coverage, can they really support the data intensity of the iPhone?  Time will tell, but current performance seems to be lagging a bit.  It's not just call quality anymore -- data speed and reliability is now a key metric -- and as bandwidth-hungry devices are quickly gobbled up by an increasing customer base, quality of service is taking a hit.

We're also beginning to see other wireless services emerge, and as concepts are proven, there will be acceleration there as well.  There's a nice summary of several here, and if you dig for more in the web you'll be pleasantly surprised.  I'm hopeful that Obama's initiative to encourage connectivity, and the FCC's response to that (in terms of frequency shuffling) will foster quick movement in this sector...but every silver lining has it's cloud.

I think that cloud is the local development process.  In order to create the infrastructure, industry has to develop it through localities and their zoning controls -- I'm not saying that controls are bad, but I am saying that these controls vary so widely, and in places are so draconian, that creation of the infrastructure that the public demands is significantly impeded.  We've been at the wireless game now for something like 20 years...but our approach to the deployment of the infrastructure, and the regulation of that deployment has gone from bad to worse...just at the moment when we need to see a better, more efficient development process with better designed end results.  It's almost like we've painted ourselves into a corner...and as more powerful phones and devices are released and we can do more with them, our ability to really use them may be compromised by our current approach to controlling industry's deployment of the infrastructure which makes them work.  In the end, is all that control really getting our communities what they want?

RES