Earlier this week, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) took its gloves off in its fight against the FCC’s plan to hand over more television spectrum to the wireless industry. In a widely publicized letter to four key lawmakers, the NAB insinuated that wireless operators and cable companies like Time Warner Cable were fabricating the spectrum crunch, “hoarding” bandwidth instead of using it.

The NAB cited a damning quote from Time Warner Cable’s earnings call last week, when Time Warner Cable CFO Robert Marcus said the company didn’t have any current plans to divest, monetize or otherwise use the spectrum, and hinted the company was letting the spectrum grow in value so it could sell it off at a profit.

On top of Time Warner Cable’s tacit admission that it’s hoarding its spectrum to make a profit, there’s the unused AWS spectrum held by Verizon, AT&T and the other companies that purchased spectrum with Time Warner back in 2006. With the exception of Cox, which has only deployed in three markets, none of the companies are using their AWS spectrum, even as they beg the FCC to open up more bandwidth lest U.S. consumers miss out on the benefits of mobile broadband services.

It makes for pretty powerful ammunition for the NAB’s argument. How can the industry claim it needs more spectrum when it’s not using the bandwidth it already has? If we’re really in the midst of a looming spectrum crunch, as claimed by carriers, CTIA and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, why is the industry sitting on spectrum? I have to admit, it doesn’t look good.

Proponents of the NAB’s argument paint a picture of a national conspiracy to enrich the government and fatten corporations' coffers. To quote an op-ed by Karl Bode at DSLreports.com: “…selling the spectrum makes the government money, squatting on it creates scarcity, by proxy making spectrum worth more for squatters, all while keeping the spectrum out of the hands of new entrants and competitors.”

Then there’s a report from Dave Burstein, the publisher and editor of DSLprime.com. Burnstein claims to have e-mails from an FCC insider proving that the spectrum crisis is “a lie that's being perpetuated to the uncertain benefit of a few and definite detriment of the rest.” To hear Burnstein tell it, operators have plenty of spectrum and Genachowski may be complicit in faking the spectrum crisis for political gain.

I suspect the answer is more benign. I talked to Chris Pearson, president of 4G Americas, about this week’s hullabaloo over the spectrum crunch. He conceded that yes, some wireless operators haven’t deployed services on their spectrum, but argued the fast pace of the wireless industry was to blame, not some pie-in-the-sky conspiracy between the FCC, the Treasury Department and the wireless industry.

In response to the NAB’s claims this week, AT&T announced it would be using both its AWS and 700 MHz spectrum for its LTE deployment, debunking speculation that it’s hoarding bandwidth. I couldn’t get in touch with Verizon for this piece, but it’s not much of a stretch to guess that AWS will be part of its LTE deployment as well. Yes, it’s taken AT&T a few years to bring its AWS spectrum to market, but that’s not unusual. It’s par for the course in a fast moving industry.

The wireless industry is not hoarding spectrum. It looks like Time Warner Cable is, but since they’re a cable operator, that doesn’t make the spectrum crunch faced by the wireless industry any less of a reality. Wireless operators are facing massive demand for mobile broadband services and need spectrum to meet that demand. The most recent estimates from Cisco put global mobile data traffic at 6.3 exabytes of data per month by 2015 – a 26-fold increase over last year. The government needs to bring more spectrum to market to help operators meet this demand, and fast. This amount of demand can’t be solved solely through hardware fixes like more backhaul and improved network architecture – the industry needs more spectrum.

That’s not to say all parts of the NAB’s argument are false. We should be using spectrum as efficiently as possible, and getting an inventory of who’s using the country’s valuable spectrum resources is probably a good idea – as long as it doesn’t mean indefinite delays in bringing new spectrum to market. Perhaps we should be taking a closer look at companies like Time Warner Cable that seem to be sitting on spectrum with no plans to bring it to market in any meaningful way. It’s time to put this spectrum crunch spat behind us and move forward with voluntary auctions, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do a spectrum inventory along the way.