Question then: The spectrum utilization itself is the component of the pipe, correct? Meaning you're either using a channel or you're not. Today's modern smartphones maintain an always-on data connection for things like push email, etc., which would tie up a data connection 24/7, normally.
If that's all true, then what's the difference if I'm browsing low-bandwidth FR vs. high-bandwidth HD video (other than the theoretical throughput capacity of the cell site)? Both occupy the already-used connection to the cell tower for data. Voice would therefore be independent of this, and not suffer whatsoever in high bandwidth data vs. low bandwidth data.
Maybe my premise is wrong and high-bandwidth internet traffic consumes more of the spectrum, but I can't see justification of that anywhere on the net. I'll stand corrected if it does, however.
Ok, I see what you're saying. I don't have an answer because the article wasn't detailed enough. I don't know exactly where the bottleneck is. The article isn't clear if they're running out of virtual bandwidth or total bandwidth.
Think of cable TV 15 years ago. You still had analog channels coming through the same cable as the digital channels. Early on, the providers ran out of (for simplicity's sake) digital bandwidth, so they started over compressing digital channels to squeeze more in to the space available. That was fixed by upgrading the equipment on both the transmission and receiving end.
Later they hit another wall, and reached the limits of what the old copper could carry. Then even the analog channels started to suffer. That wasn't as easy a fix. The only to fix that was to lay tens of thousands of miles of new copper (or better yet, optical) cable.