4 ways to stave off the cell phone apocalypse

It's easy to get frustrated about the effects of the spectrum crunch. Higher bills, fewer choices, and dismal service are enough to make even the casual cell phone customer furious. Making things worse, none of the solutions for easing the spectrum shortage are inexpensive or easy. There's no catch-all fix on the horizon. The good news, though, is that options exist -- and carriers understand that doing nothing would be disastrous. Here are the four primary ways they're going about staving off a spectrum crisis and the resulting cell phone apocalypse. The options are: Reusing spectrum, Make more efficient use of existing spectrum, Wi-Fi offloading, and Adding additional spectrum.