Your smartphone’s future rests on this obscure but historic auction. And nobody’s sure it will even work.

[Commentary] The country's entire mobile future right now rests on broadcast television.

Here's how: Coming in 2016 is an incredibly important auction that will sell spectrum -- the invisible airwaves that carry voices, pictures and data over the air and into your home. It's spectrum that makes your 3G and LTE connections work. Spectrum is behind Wi-Fi and satellite communications. It's what makes broadcast television possible. With more of us taking our video consumption on the road with tablets and phones, mobile wireless networks will need a lot more capacity if they're going to keep up. That's where TV stations come in. Under this auction, they'd sell their airwaves to wireless carriers. But it's a complicated process. Nobody can predict for sure how it will turn out -- or if it will even work. Some broadcasters might choose not to bring their spectrum to the table. If that happens, the whole auction could fall apart. That would be disastrous for wireless carriers such as AT&T and T-Mobile, many of whom want access to those airwaves so they can build faster cellular data networks and offer better voice service. But if the broadcasters, lured by the prospect of cashing huge checks from the wireless industry, all decide to get in the game, what we'll witness is a historic nationwide transfer of corporate real estate.