"No one's going to notice a difference next year because of what he's announcing today," Farrar said. Even the most immediate developments probably won't yield new networks or added performance for two or three years, he said.

In light of this, it's likely the FCC will hand out strict buildout timelines along with the spectrum licenses, Farrar said. When it approved Verizon's acquisition of spectrum from a group of cable companies earlier this year, the agency forced a faster rollout of the network to make sure the spectrum got used, he said. "There've been people who sat on spectrum in the past," Farrar said.

The IDG News Service