So what’s that giant crunching sound?  No, it’s not the guy next to me at Starbucks eating his biscotti.  (Well, it is that, too, and I do wish he would stop). But the giant crunching sound to which I refer today (with apologies to Ross Perot‘s famous “giant sucking sound”) is the sound of wireless bandwidth growing scarcer as mobile usage skyrockets –  the sound of the spectrum crunch.

To wit:  Dramatic figures from a new Pew Research report. They found:

• Nearly two-thirds of adult owners use their phones to go online. This has doubled since Pew began looking at these numbers. (That was only 2009!)
• One in five adult cell owners do most of their browsing on their mobile phone, versus a laptop or PC.

This blogger reached out to Pew, who told them if tablets were included, the number would be higher still.

NB:  Policymakers aren’t the only ones who should be interested in this data.  Marketers should take note. It’s more important than ever to have a website that’s mobile friendly.