In a packed North Hall auditorium Friday, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski sounded the call to open up additional radio spectrum in order to satisfy huge anticipated increases in demand that mobile products and services are expected to create in the near future. Even though the FCC is about to triple the amount of spectrum available for mobile broadband, Genachowski said that won’t be sufficient given forecasts of up to 35 times more mobile broadband traffic within 5 years.

The chairman is a proponent of “voluntary incentive auctions,” in which broadcasters willingly give up spectrum in exchange for some of the proceeds from the auction, and he expects that such auctions will be a major means by which to free up spectrum. In order to conduct them, though, Congress needs to act first. Genachowski is so confident that Congress will do so that the FCC is laying some initial groundwork to conduct auctions in anticipation of such action, and expects to conduct the first auction later this year.  In the one-on-one Q&A after the event, CEA president and CEO Gary Shapiroasked why companies should be given a share of the auction proceeds when the spectrum does not actually belong to them. Genachowski responded that the Commission put forth a plan that he and his colleagues hope will gain bipartisan support and that “people could rally around.” In other words, if you want to get things done, sometimes you make compromises.

Many observers expected Genachowski to comment on the FCC’s widely publicized order last month in its Open Internet “net neutrality” rulemaking (see an earlier ETC blog post here), but today was all about spectrum. Not very surprising, really, given how controversial the net neutrality issue is and how many questions remain unanswered. And of course, given the number of wireless products on offer this week, it’s easy to wonder how all these radio devices are going to coexist.