Harder than herding cats: Networks seek international agreement on new mobile spectrum

Of the three ways carriers might boost the capacity of the mobile networks we increasingly rely on, the one they will try in Geneva next month is probably the hardest.

Adding extra cells to their networks in order to reuse the same radio frequencies in more places just involves some extra base station hardware -- and permission from a lot of farmers and building owners to erect new antennas.

Using a more efficient radio protocol to shoehorn more bits per second into the same radio channels also only involves upgrades to base stations -- and, of course, to every subscriber's phone to make them compatible with the new protocol.

But those are easy compared to the third option: Finding some unused or underused radio spectrum that mobile networks can use to expand existing services or introduce new ones.

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