Verizon: give us more spectrum, we're gasping over here

VZW has stacks of money and plenty of ambition, but apparently it's already running out of mobile spectrum. The operator is trying to buy an extra block of airwaves from some cable companies in a $3.9 billion deal, but it has faced bitter resistance from rival networks who claim it's wrong for one company to hog so much electromagnetism. In a filing to the FCC yesterday, Verizon told regulators that its LTE network will start hitting spectrum limits as soon as next year in some areas of the US, with more areas being affected by 2015. Is it time to panic?