The federal government has made opening up new spectrum for commercial wireless data use one of its major goals in furthering the spread of mobile broadband.  The recently that growth in wireless data demand will lead to a "spectrum deficit" of 275MHz if no new spectrum is released by 2014.

The FCC has said it wants to free up at least 300MHz of new spectrum for voice and data dual use by 2014, as well as an additional 150MHz that could be used solely for wireless broadband. This is in line with the recommendations that the FCC free up a total of 500MHz of new spectrum for mobile broadband in the National Broadband Plan released earlier this year. In that report, the FCC said it would look at freeing up 120MHz of spectrum currently being used for broadcast television, 90MHz of spectrum used by mobile satellite services and 60MHz of spectrum known as the Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum band.

Several research firms and companies have projected an explosion in wireless broadband consumption over the next few years, fueled mainly by 4G mobile data technologies such as WiMAX and LTE that will allow for the streaming of high-definition video over the air. IT research firm Ovum, for instance, has projected that the number of mobile users subscribing to either 3G or 4G services will grow to 2 billion worldwide by 2014. Goldman Sachs' investment research arm, meanwhile, projected last month that wireless data revenues would surge by more than six-fold by the year 2020 and that wireless data revenues would nearly triple over the next two years alone.

in Network World's Anti-malware section.