Measuring the Information Society 2011 Box 4.2: The spectrum crisis: struggling to keep up the speed, capacity and quality of mobile services One of the major issues arising from the rapid increase in mo-bile- There are also a number of efforts to find innovative techno-logical broadband subscriptions and data traffic is the spectrum solutions to the spectrum crunch, such as the use of crisis,19 a situation where demand exceeds the mobile-cellular network’s capacity and which affects mobile operators that are unable to maintain the quality of data services. One example is the problems that smartphone customers have encountered in New York City, where a severely overloaded 3G network has led to dropped calls and slow data speeds.20 There are a number of approaches now being adopted to deal with the fact that spectrum is a finite resource that can only accommodate a limited number of users and amount of data. First, governments are looking into the effective and efficient use of frequencies that will provide mobile operators with suffi-cient femtocells, as well as looking into regulatory mechanisms to overcome bottlenecks in mobile-broadband infrastructure.23 Finally, operators in developed and developing countries have been turning to metered data plans so as to be able to limit the amount of data transported over mobile-broadband networks. As opposed to fixed-broadband subscriptions, which often offer unlimited access to data, mobile-broadband subscriptions are typically capped. Once specified limits have been exceeded, users have either to pay extra costs, or to accept lower transmission speeds. Few operators around the world now offer truly unlimited 3G plans and some that did have been forced to change tariff schemes to deal with increased data flows and to protect their networks. In the United States, Verizon announced in June 2011 that it was going to end its USD 30 offer for unlimited data ac-cess. spectrum. This also includes the use of spectrum from the «digital dividend» resulting from the switchover from analogue to digital television broadcasting,21 or the refarming of bands to make them available for mobile-broadband services. Another way to overcome spectrum limitations is to distribute the burden on 3G mobile-broadband networks by offloading traffic to other networks, including WiFi hotspots and femtocells. More and more operators across the world are taking advantage of offloading and operators are working closely with handset and hardware manufacturers to provide users with a seamless connectivity experience between 3G mobile-broadband and WiFi networks.22 24 In the Republic of Korea, Korea Telecom has ceased offering unlimited data plans to new customers.25 While this approach can help operators deal with overloaded networks, it is not an ideal solution for all users, since it effectively limits the type and amount of services and applications that can be used, which will in turn discourage users from accessing data-intensive services. It seems like a particularly constraining solution for many people in developing countries, and in cases where mobile broadband is the only access technology available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