Had a chance last week to discuss mobile data congestion with John Moe host of Future Tense at American Public Media

The coming data traffic jam

07/23/10 09:35 AM

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If you don’t own a smart phone now, you probably will soon.

Here’s the picture from Wall Street:  Nokia, which pretty much makes regular old cell phones, announced a 40 percent drop in revenues Thursday. On the same day, AT&T said they had a huge quarter with lots of new customers for the iPhone activated 3.2 million new iPhones last quarter. Meanwhile, research firm Strategy Analytics says smart phone shipments are up 43 percent worldwide.

Americans are ditching cell phones in favor of devices that can make calls AND check email AND update Facebook AND stream video AND you get the idea.  In the process, we’re flooding the data networks these smart phones rely on. It’s lots of fun now, but is it sustainable? Can the networks do what we’re asking of them?

We check in with industry analyst Cheetan Sharma, whose clients include both AT&T and Verizon, about this issue. We also talk to Glenn Fleishman of Wi-Fi Networking News.