Discussing the past and future of the wireless industry at the CTIA Fall 2009 show in San Diego, mobile chipmaker Qualcomm's father-son duo - founder Irwin Jacobs and CEO Paul Jacobs - said on Thursday that the current developments in wireless data traffic call for increased wireless spectrum.

Sharing the stage with Steve Largent, CEO and President of CTIA - the lobbying organization for the wireless industry -, the Jacobs reiterated that the existing wireless spectrum has maxed out, and would not be able to keep pace with the growing customer demand for wireless Internet.

Stressing the need for additional spectrum, Paul Jacobs said: "We are getting to the point where, in the lab, we've sort of done what we know how to do to optimize any given radio link. We have to use different tricks now."

While the senior Jacobs suggested the use of femtocells to help create personal cell sites for enhancing cellular phone signals in homes or offices, the younger Jacobs opined that wireless operators should make additions to their backhaul networks' capacity.

Furthermore, in an endeavor to push the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to assign more wireless spectrum for auction, the CTIA recently wrote to the agency, seeking the allocation of an additional 800 MHz of spectrum.

Meanwhile, the FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski too mentioned a "looming spectrum crisis" at the CTIA show on Wednesday.