Spectrum The Talk Of State Of the Mobile Net Forum

Representatives of top telecommunication companies, industry stakeholders and some government officials gathered on Capitol Hill Wednesday to discuss mobile Internet communications with much debate focused on how to ensure future growth and innovation is not stifled by limits on the availability of spectrum.

At the second annual State of the Mobile Net Conference, telecom experts chewed over the possibilities and constraints of the wireless industry, one of the fastest-changing sectors of the U.S. economy. "We are just scratching the surface of what you can wireless enable," Glenn Lurie, president of emerging devices at AT&T, said during a keynote address. Lurie outlined some of the mobile products AT&T will provide networking capacity for including a pet-tracking collar and a pill-bottle cap that will remind the user to take their medication. Much of the discussion, however, circled back to the growing demand for spectrum to accommodate the growth of the mobile Internet. "Integrating market mechanisms into the spectrum allocation process" is critical for the future, Blair Levin, executive director of the FCC's broadband task force, said. Allocating spectrum based on history, rather than markets, Levin stated, has been the traditional practice of government.