No, I don't think so. If that were true, the cell system would have to upgrade its throughput. That would make this scheme unattractive to cell companies. I th

No, I don't think so. If that were true, the cell system would have to upgrade its throughput. That would make this scheme unattractive to cell companies. I think the reason for all the attention given to this method is because it greatly improves the performance of a cell system without requiring any bandwidth increase. Remember that dropped packets are at times a big limitation on cell system performance, and much existing bandwidth is often wasted on packets that don't get decoded properly because of weak signals. > It's as if only a single cell phone was in a given tower cell, and the tower was dedicating all its bandwidth to that single phone. If the system can adjust the phases of the transmitting antennas to maximize the signal strength to a particular device, for each transmitted packet, then for all practical purposes that's true -- the entire bandwidth of the system really does become available to that particular device, for the duration of each packet meant for it. I don't know the statistics on dropped packets, but I think it's substantial in modern times for high-speed networks. The ratio of dropped packets essentially represents a bandwidth decrease. If that could be eliminated, it would improve throughput, and someone will be tempted to claim that bandwidth has increased. Only sort of.