Not even the inventor of the cellphone, Martin Cooper, is convinced that the wireless industry faces a serious challenge that cannot be overcome with technology. Mr. Cooper, a former vice president of Motorola and chairman of Dyna L.L.C., an incubator for new companies, says that claims of a so-called spectrum crisis are largely exaggerated.

“Somehow in the last 100 years, every time there is a problem of getting more spectrum, there is a technology that comes along that solves that problem,” he said in an interview. Mr. Cooper also sits on the technical advisory committee of the Federal Communications Commission, and he previously founded ArrayComm, a company that develops software for mobile antenna technologies, which with he said he is no longer associated.

He explained that for carriers, buying spectrum is the easiest way for them to expand their network, but newer technologies, like improved antennas and techniques for offloading mobile traffic to Wi-Fi networks, could multiply the number of mobile devices that carriers can serve by at least tenfold.

Everyone agrees that data-guzzling smartphones and tablets are selling fast, and the wireless industry needs to keep up. Cisco, the networking company, published a study that shows mobile data usage more than doubled in 2011.

Cellphones are radios and their calls are carried on the electromagnetic radio spectrum just like an FM radio signal or a walkie-talkie. The F.C.C. divides up the spectrum by bands of frequency, under the theory that no one wants signals on certain frequencies interfering with one another.