How the iPhone Is Driving a Wireless Bandwidth Boom

The mobile Internet is one of the most dynamic parts of today's technology ecosystem. But most of the mobile companies are using older-generation technologies — a handful of T-1 connections that pump 6-10 megabits per second of bandwidth capacity into cell towers that turn around and share it with tens of thousands of users. But the popularity of new 3G devices such as the iPhone and BlackBerry 3G has increased the use of data, putting the backend networks under strain. And from that perspective, today's 3G networks are like glittering skyscrapers built on a foundation of matchsticks. The current buildout of wireless networks is mirroring that of the wired Internet in the late 1990s and early part of this decade. Back in the day, every time you pulled down a track from Napster, you put an enormous strain on the network, which, in turn, led to the rise of bandwidth providers such as Qwest and Level 3, along with a series of hardware makers. Today that problem is magnified manifold, mostly because the number of mobile users is so much higher than PC users accessing the Internet.