In a Reuters story that appeared on eWeek's site, wireless service providers are doing some big time planning in anticipation of the surge in demand that will hit the Washington D.C. area in January when an estimated 4 million people will converge there for the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. The article specifically named Sprint Nextel Corp as being one of the companies "beefing up equipment at existing cell towers, adding additional telephone line connections and employing satellite trucks to patrol the area in and around the nation's capital."

Apparently Sprint is boosting capacity by 90 percent on its network for mostly business and public safety customers, and 40 percent for the network for mainly individual users. The other major carriers (AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile) will be doing the same with T-Mobile indicating that its investment will be "in the millions of dollars."

Ouch! Not only does that sound expensive, but the money has to come from somewhere, right?

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