US Government: iPad and other smart mobile devices may strain networks

Soon the iPad will be upon us, and the US government is worried about the congestion it will cause.

Phil Bellaria is a staffer in the Obama administration. Specifically, he's the director of scenario planning for the federal government's Omnibus Broadband Initiative. He published a blog post earlier this week describing his initial concerns about the future demands on our networks.

"With the iPad pointing to even greater demand for mobile broadband on the horizon, we must ensure that network congestion doesn't choke off a service that consumers clearly find so appealing or frustrate mobile broadband's ability to keep us competitive in the global broadband economy. "

He refers to the network-crippling outages that occurred when Aol* first introduced unlimited Internet access in 1996. For months customers could scarcely connect, and even when they finally did those connections were fragile due to the huge numbers of people trying to get on at once.

Just as Aol remedied the situation in the 90's with network upgrades, Mr. Bellaria explains, current Wi-Fi and 3G providers must prepare for the onslaught that iPad mania will bring. In the recent iPad press event, Scott Forstall mentioned the network upgrades that AT&T is currently working on. Hurry up, AT&T! The clock is ticking!

[Via International Business Times]

*Full disclosure: Aol is our parent company.