What’s Wireless Spectrum and Why You Care About It More Than You Think

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What's spectrum?

When we're talking about spectrum in the context of phones, we're talking about the radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum. So we're talking about radio waves—the same kind that carries music and the dulcet tones of talk radio blowhards to your car stereo, or teevee to your grandparents' set with bunny ears. And the rate at which these radio waves oscillate is known as frequency.
The reason you're hearing so much about spectrum lately is because each carrier's spectrum holdings determines their wireless communication capacity. Each carrier has a license from the FCC to transmit on certain frequencies and each frequency has a finite amount of users it can support. There's also a very finite amount of spectrum to go around.  more...