As we've been discussing lately, there's many people who like to insist we're always facing an unavoidable "capacity crisis" that never arrives. If you find someone engaging in capacity scare mongering, they're usually selling hardware (Cisco, Sandvine), bad anti-competitive policy and high price justifications (carrier lobbyists), or eager to make a buck off of spectrum auctions (FCC). The weak link in this equation is usually the press, who takes whatever congestion statistics are fed to them without so much as a question, then repeats them ad nauseum (see AT&T's claim that DSL, U-Verse caps were necessary on a landline network that isn't congested).

Exhibit A is a series that CNN has been running this week on the "spectrum crunch" that literally reads like it was written by carriers, proclaiming loudly that "America's airwaves are full."

In part one, CNN claims a spectrum apocalypse will soon result in more dropped calls, slower data speeds and higher prices. Absolutely terrifying! The proof? A statistic provided by AT&T showing wireless network growth of 20,000% since the iPhone's debut. CNN forgets to mention those numbers recently were artificially bloated to include Wi-Fi, or that both AT&T and FCC wireless growth numbers have been shown to be wildly overly-inflated.

In part three of the CNN series, CNN informs readers that the capacity crisis -- not the carriers themselves -- are to blame for all the ridiculous nickel and dime fees carriers are imposing, and that you'd really just better get used to it, amusingly insisting that the "ideal customer is someone with a smartphone they use sparingly." Reporter David Goldman even goes so far as to trot out the old telco-think idea that content companies should subsidize carriers (hey, just because!):It's amusing that the CNN series came the same week that Verizon was admitting they have plenty of spectrum, and on the heels of a report noting AT&T's also in fine shape once they start using what they already have efficiently. Sadly, there's no mention anywhere in the CNN series that if there is a spectrum shortage, it's in part thanks to anti-competitive spectrum squatting and inefficient use of existing resources. The latter can and will be fixed, the former the technology press simply refuses to admit is even real. It's cute, but CNN actually still believes that things like $10 per gigabyte overages and fee price gouging are tied to real provision costs, not greed.

While again there's absolutely a finite amount of spectrum, it's an issue we can engineer around provided we can handle anti-competitive spectrum squatting. The media seems utterly transfixed by the carrier narrative of an endless series of capacity crises, only fixed by more protectionist regulations, higher rates, more anti-competitive behavior, and less choice. The "capacity crisis" simply wouldn't exist if reporters asked tougher questions and started thinking for themselves. There is no spectrum apocalypse bogeyman.