Information from Broadcast Industry Insiders
A Full Accounting of the liars !!
A Full Accounting - From TV Technology Magazine
A Full Accounting
Maybe FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski thinks time is not on his side—at least when it comes to the commission's national broadband plan.
Why else would the chairman be racheting up the hyperbole to support his contention that a scarcity of spectrum that could be used for wireless services will soon become a "national crisis"? Last month at CES, he repeated his contention that releasing more mobile spectrum would be the commission's "top priority" for this year. "The consumer electronics industry is going wireless.... We need to free up more spectrum," he told CEA President Gary Shapiro.
But is it really a crisis? Is it true that "demand for spectrum will soon outstrip supply," as he declared at CES?
Maybe not. According to dslreports.com, some within the commission believe that the crisis has been manufactured and that it need not be a priority while major telecom giants such as AT&T and Verizon sit on large chunks of unused spectrum. "There was a big push to manufacture a spectrum crisis," reported dslreports.com, quoting an anonymous source in the commission. "It's a lie that's being perpetuated to the uncertain benefit of a few and definite detriment of the rest."
Now comes word that Time Warner, the nation's second largest cable operator, has no plans to use its wireless spectrum, according to Communications Daily. If large cable operators are allowed "spectrum speculation," why the rush to reclaim broadcast? NAB, for one, wants to know.
"Time Warner Cable is engaged in warehousing of spectrum that could be deployed to help build out wireless Internet service to unserved markets," NAB President Gordon Smith told Congress last month. "This surprising admission from the Time Warner Cable chief operating officer comes at a time when other press reports have indicated that wireless car-riers are sitting on as much as $15 billion in spectrum that has yet to be deployed."
We're not going to reiterate why we believe broadcast is a more efficient use of the spectrum that is already being used. And we're not going to repeat the arguments opponents use to justify the return of that spectrum—those positions are already well known.
Regardless of the arguments, it's the ultimate responsibility of the FCC—the guardians of this spectrum—to give a full accounting of its use before any major transactions occur that could result in the loss of free public access. Last month, Sen. Olympic Snowe, the Republican Senator from Maine, told the FCC chairman that "while an inventory of both federal and non-federal spectrum would not answer all of our questions, it would provide decision makers at the FCC, NTIA and Congress a clearer, more detailed and up-to-date understanding of how spectrum is currently being used and by whom—data essential to sound policy decisions and spectrum management."
We couldn't agree more.
Posted on TV Technology Blog by Tom Butts at 02/14/2011 01:51:11 PM. Used with permission.
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Maybe FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski thinks time is not on his side
Or maybe he is just a typical lying politician, like his Boss Osama Obama. These people setting on unused spectrum should be the first to have it ripped out from under them like they are going to do to Broadcast TV.
What does a Cable TV conglomerate like Time Warner need with broadcast spectrum anyway? Can you smell the fat rat here? They are setting on billions of dollars worth of spectrum that they expect to get paid billions for, while they watch their competition get hammered out of existence by greed.
This is the definition of a robber baron, " Robber baron is a pejorative term used for a powerful 19th century United States businessman and banker. The term may now relate to any businessman or banker who used questionable business practices to become powerful or wealthy". It couldn't be any clearer what they have in mind, at least to me. The people and emergency communications be damned so robber barons can do what they do so well, STEAL DOLLARS OUT OF OUR POCKETS !!
I don't apologize to anyone for my "Radical View point" because the truth is not always considered radical when it is finally exposed !!
A Full Accounting - From TV Technology Magazine
A Full Accounting
Maybe FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski thinks time is not on his side—at least when it comes to the commission's national broadband plan.
Why else would the chairman be racheting up the hyperbole to support his contention that a scarcity of spectrum that could be used for wireless services will soon become a "national crisis"? Last month at CES, he repeated his contention that releasing more mobile spectrum would be the commission's "top priority" for this year. "The consumer electronics industry is going wireless.... We need to free up more spectrum," he told CEA President Gary Shapiro.
But is it really a crisis? Is it true that "demand for spectrum will soon outstrip supply," as he declared at CES?
Maybe not. According to dslreports.com, some within the commission believe that the crisis has been manufactured and that it need not be a priority while major telecom giants such as AT&T and Verizon sit on large chunks of unused spectrum. "There was a big push to manufacture a spectrum crisis," reported dslreports.com, quoting an anonymous source in the commission. "It's a lie that's being perpetuated to the uncertain benefit of a few and definite detriment of the rest."
Now comes word that Time Warner, the nation's second largest cable operator, has no plans to use its wireless spectrum, according to Communications Daily. If large cable operators are allowed "spectrum speculation," why the rush to reclaim broadcast? NAB, for one, wants to know.
"Time Warner Cable is engaged in warehousing of spectrum that could be deployed to help build out wireless Internet service to unserved markets," NAB President Gordon Smith told Congress last month. "This surprising admission from the Time Warner Cable chief operating officer comes at a time when other press reports have indicated that wireless car-riers are sitting on as much as $15 billion in spectrum that has yet to be deployed."
We're not going to reiterate why we believe broadcast is a more efficient use of the spectrum that is already being used. And we're not going to repeat the arguments opponents use to justify the return of that spectrum—those positions are already well known.
Regardless of the arguments, it's the ultimate responsibility of the FCC—the guardians of this spectrum—to give a full accounting of its use before any major transactions occur that could result in the loss of free public access. Last month, Sen. Olympic Snowe, the Republican Senator from Maine, told the FCC chairman that "while an inventory of both federal and non-federal spectrum would not answer all of our questions, it would provide decision makers at the FCC, NTIA and Congress a clearer, more detailed and up-to-date understanding of how spectrum is currently being used and by whom—data essential to sound policy decisions and spectrum management."
We couldn't agree more.
Posted on TV Technology Blog by Tom Butts at 02/14/2011 01:51:11 PM. Used with permission.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maybe FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski thinks time is not on his side
Or maybe he is just a typical lying politician, like his Boss Osama Obama. These people setting on unused spectrum should be the first to have it ripped out from under them like they are going to do to Broadcast TV.
What does a Cable TV conglomerate like Time Warner need with broadcast spectrum anyway? Can you smell the fat rat here? They are setting on billions of dollars worth of spectrum that they expect to get paid billions for, while they watch their competition get hammered out of existence by greed.
This is the definition of a robber baron, " Robber baron is a pejorative term used for a powerful 19th century United States businessman and banker. The term may now relate to any businessman or banker who used questionable business practices to become powerful or wealthy". It couldn't be any clearer what they have in mind, at least to me. The people and emergency communications be damned so robber barons can do what they do so well, STEAL DOLLARS OUT OF OUR POCKETS !!
I don't apologize to anyone for my "Radical View point" because the truth is not always considered radical when it is finally exposed !!
More Specttum lies and confusion.
Posted on March 1, 2011 by Harry Cole To Serve Broadcasters* : CommLawBlog
Another peek at what spectrum re-purposing might look like
In what appears to be an ongoing effort by the Media Bureau to soften the ground on the spectrum re-purposing front in advance of an eventual all-out assault, Bureau Chief William Lake recently spoke to the National Alliance of State Broadcasters Associations, preaching the gospel of incentive auctions. His message: We come in peace, with broadcasters’ interests at heart. Submit to our plans and everything will work out for the best. Honest.
Maybe theirs is the path to the ultimate win-win-win situation. As we have previously urged, broadcasters should keep an open mind and give careful consideration to any final plan the Commission eventually comes up with.
But broadcasters might also be forgiven if, at least for now, they opt for skepticism over unquestioning acceptance.
In his speech (the text of which may be found here), Lake lays out five basic points. Let’s take a look at them.
Point 1: The need for more spectrum for wireless broadband is real.
We can all agree that the general public is relying increasingly on mobile devices, and that, to the extent that those devices require spectrum to do their job, the demand for wireless-friendly spectrum is growing correspondingly. No problem there.
But the existence of increased demand for spectrum does not necessarily support the FCC’s apparent conclusion that it is essential that TV broadcasters cough up their particular chunks of spectrum so that others might use it. Why, for instance, can’t the Commission simply modify the rules governing spectrum use to permit broadcasters to offer wireless services? If the need for spectrum is so dire, shouldn’t the Commission be doing everything it can to encourage innovations that could increase efficient spectrum use? (Apparently not, since the Bureau recently rejected a proposal for experimental authority to test an over-the-air broadband delivery service on TV channels.)
Point 2: All the good spectrum is already occupied, so somebody’s going to have to be relocated – and that somebody should be TV.
While it’s one thing to speak generally of total spectrum congestion, it’s another to provide a detailed inventory of precisely (a) who’s got what spectrum, (b) how long they’ve had it, and (c) what they’re currently doing with it. A number of senators submitted a bill two years ago that would have required the FCC and NTIA to assemble such an inventory. That bill went nowhere.
The Commission is apparently sensitive to criticism about the utilization of spectrum by non-broadcasters, as Lake (somewhat defensively, it seemed) alluded in his speech to the fact that Verizon and AT&T are in the process of building out the spectrum they bought three years ago. (According to Lake, Verizon expects to be serving nearly 300 million folks by the end of 2013; AT&T plans to be serving 75 million by mid-2011and “to expand rapidly after that”.) OK, that’s two spectrum holders. How about the rest, including the government itself? Does the Commission really have a solid, detailed grasp of actual spectrum usage? Shouldn’t it – at least before starting to herd an established industry off into more confined pastures?
Point 3: The FCC has the broadcast industry’s interests at heart.
Lake says this point “deserves emphasis”, but then dedicates a grand total of two sentences to it. In the first sentence, he perfunctorily tips his hat to the “great service” TV provides to the public. The second (and last) sentence reads simply:
We firmly believe that an incentive auction can provide a financial shot in the arm for those broadcasters who choose to participate and can leave the remainder of the industry in an even strong position to carry on the important benefits of over-the-air television.
The Commission may in fact believe that – but you have to admit that the wholesale lack of detail there is a bit disquieting. It has the ring of an over-eager sales pitch, holding out the promise of pure upside and non-existent downside.
Point 4: “It is natural to fear the unknown.”
No kidding. Unfortunately, what is unknown to broadcasters is, at this point, also unknown to the Commission. That’s because the FCC’s preferred course – incentive auctions – isn’t currently available to the Commission, and won’t be unless and until Congress gives it the authority to offer such incentives.
But that doesn’t stop Lake from offering glimpses of an idyllic system in which broadcasters would basically name their own price (by setting, up front, a “reserve price” for their spectrum). Once the spectrum to be sold is identified, the Commission would auction it off, with the proceeds “being shared” by the Treasury and contributing broadcasters. Lake emphasizes that any participating broadcaster would “set its own price”.
That sounds great, but would it really be as simple as that? Who knows – since neither the precise auction mechanisms nor any possible limitations on the splitting of auction proceeds have even been proposed, much less adopted?
Point 5: Keep an open mind.
This one we can all agree on. It never does anybody any good to make prejudgments about unknowns, and at this point the incentive auction is just that, an unknown.
But because it is an unknown, it’s also important not to be lulled into a false sense of tranquility and acceptance. The Commission may, as Lake indicates, be totally committed to doing right by broadcasters. But even if that’s the case, the Commission may find those best wishes frustrated by whatever Congress does.
And then there’s the possibility that, while the Commission may talk a good game, its seemingly monomaniacal obsession to maximize the spread of wireless broadband is really the only thing that matters here – and if broadcasters get in the way of that goal, well, that’ll just be too bad. (Indeed, according to a speech given by former Chairman Reed Hundt on the eve of the adoption of the National Broadband Plan last year, the weaning of the American public away from broadcasting and onto the Internet as the dominant “common medium” has apparently been a project on Chairman Genachowski’s to-do list since he served as Hundt’s Chief Counsel back in the mid-1990s.)
At this point, none of us can know for sure what’s going to happen – indeed, even the Commission can’t know, given its lack of statutory authority. So while we should definitely maintain an open mind and a willingness to examine alternatives, we should also be mindful that the halcyon image Lake has described may not be anywhere close to the eventual reality.
*With acknowledgement to Rod Serling and Damon Knight.
Tags: Broadcast, Cellular, Incentive auction, Internet, NBP, National Broadband Plan, Re-purposing of spectrum, Repurposing of TV spectrum, Spectrum re-purposing, TV channel-sharing, VHF repacking, Wireless Telephony, webinar
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I sure am glad that Orange Julius and his band of thugs don't have the power they think or wish they had, or DTV would already be doomed to Dinosaur status as you read this. Fortunately, we have many watchdogs and knowledgeable people and organizations that see the true value of Broadcst TV, and http://www.commlawblog.com/2011/03/articles/broadcast/to-serve-broadcasters/want to save the TV Broadcast industry, so not all is lost.....YET !!
Posted on March 1, 2011 by Harry Cole To Serve Broadcasters* : CommLawBlog
Another peek at what spectrum re-purposing might look like
In what appears to be an ongoing effort by the Media Bureau to soften the ground on the spectrum re-purposing front in advance of an eventual all-out assault, Bureau Chief William Lake recently spoke to the National Alliance of State Broadcasters Associations, preaching the gospel of incentive auctions. His message: We come in peace, with broadcasters’ interests at heart. Submit to our plans and everything will work out for the best. Honest.
Maybe theirs is the path to the ultimate win-win-win situation. As we have previously urged, broadcasters should keep an open mind and give careful consideration to any final plan the Commission eventually comes up with.
But broadcasters might also be forgiven if, at least for now, they opt for skepticism over unquestioning acceptance.
In his speech (the text of which may be found here), Lake lays out five basic points. Let’s take a look at them.
Point 1: The need for more spectrum for wireless broadband is real.
We can all agree that the general public is relying increasingly on mobile devices, and that, to the extent that those devices require spectrum to do their job, the demand for wireless-friendly spectrum is growing correspondingly. No problem there.
But the existence of increased demand for spectrum does not necessarily support the FCC’s apparent conclusion that it is essential that TV broadcasters cough up their particular chunks of spectrum so that others might use it. Why, for instance, can’t the Commission simply modify the rules governing spectrum use to permit broadcasters to offer wireless services? If the need for spectrum is so dire, shouldn’t the Commission be doing everything it can to encourage innovations that could increase efficient spectrum use? (Apparently not, since the Bureau recently rejected a proposal for experimental authority to test an over-the-air broadband delivery service on TV channels.)
Point 2: All the good spectrum is already occupied, so somebody’s going to have to be relocated – and that somebody should be TV.
While it’s one thing to speak generally of total spectrum congestion, it’s another to provide a detailed inventory of precisely (a) who’s got what spectrum, (b) how long they’ve had it, and (c) what they’re currently doing with it. A number of senators submitted a bill two years ago that would have required the FCC and NTIA to assemble such an inventory. That bill went nowhere.
The Commission is apparently sensitive to criticism about the utilization of spectrum by non-broadcasters, as Lake (somewhat defensively, it seemed) alluded in his speech to the fact that Verizon and AT&T are in the process of building out the spectrum they bought three years ago. (According to Lake, Verizon expects to be serving nearly 300 million folks by the end of 2013; AT&T plans to be serving 75 million by mid-2011and “to expand rapidly after that”.) OK, that’s two spectrum holders. How about the rest, including the government itself? Does the Commission really have a solid, detailed grasp of actual spectrum usage? Shouldn’t it – at least before starting to herd an established industry off into more confined pastures?
Point 3: The FCC has the broadcast industry’s interests at heart.
Lake says this point “deserves emphasis”, but then dedicates a grand total of two sentences to it. In the first sentence, he perfunctorily tips his hat to the “great service” TV provides to the public. The second (and last) sentence reads simply:
We firmly believe that an incentive auction can provide a financial shot in the arm for those broadcasters who choose to participate and can leave the remainder of the industry in an even strong position to carry on the important benefits of over-the-air television.
The Commission may in fact believe that – but you have to admit that the wholesale lack of detail there is a bit disquieting. It has the ring of an over-eager sales pitch, holding out the promise of pure upside and non-existent downside.
Point 4: “It is natural to fear the unknown.”
No kidding. Unfortunately, what is unknown to broadcasters is, at this point, also unknown to the Commission. That’s because the FCC’s preferred course – incentive auctions – isn’t currently available to the Commission, and won’t be unless and until Congress gives it the authority to offer such incentives.
But that doesn’t stop Lake from offering glimpses of an idyllic system in which broadcasters would basically name their own price (by setting, up front, a “reserve price” for their spectrum). Once the spectrum to be sold is identified, the Commission would auction it off, with the proceeds “being shared” by the Treasury and contributing broadcasters. Lake emphasizes that any participating broadcaster would “set its own price”.
That sounds great, but would it really be as simple as that? Who knows – since neither the precise auction mechanisms nor any possible limitations on the splitting of auction proceeds have even been proposed, much less adopted?
Point 5: Keep an open mind.
This one we can all agree on. It never does anybody any good to make prejudgments about unknowns, and at this point the incentive auction is just that, an unknown.
But because it is an unknown, it’s also important not to be lulled into a false sense of tranquility and acceptance. The Commission may, as Lake indicates, be totally committed to doing right by broadcasters. But even if that’s the case, the Commission may find those best wishes frustrated by whatever Congress does.
And then there’s the possibility that, while the Commission may talk a good game, its seemingly monomaniacal obsession to maximize the spread of wireless broadband is really the only thing that matters here – and if broadcasters get in the way of that goal, well, that’ll just be too bad. (Indeed, according to a speech given by former Chairman Reed Hundt on the eve of the adoption of the National Broadband Plan last year, the weaning of the American public away from broadcasting and onto the Internet as the dominant “common medium” has apparently been a project on Chairman Genachowski’s to-do list since he served as Hundt’s Chief Counsel back in the mid-1990s.)
At this point, none of us can know for sure what’s going to happen – indeed, even the Commission can’t know, given its lack of statutory authority. So while we should definitely maintain an open mind and a willingness to examine alternatives, we should also be mindful that the halcyon image Lake has described may not be anywhere close to the eventual reality.
*With acknowledgement to Rod Serling and Damon Knight.
Tags: Broadcast, Cellular, Incentive auction, Internet, NBP, National Broadband Plan, Re-purposing of spectrum, Repurposing of TV spectrum, Spectrum re-purposing, TV channel-sharing, VHF repacking, Wireless Telephony, webinar
Trackbacks (0) Links to blogs that reference this article Trackback URL
http://www.commlawblog.com/admin/trackback/241437
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I sure am glad that Orange Julius and his band of thugs don't have the power they think or wish they had, or DTV would already be doomed to Dinosaur status as you read this. Fortunately, we have many watchdogs and knowledgeable people and organizations that see the true value of Broadcst TV, and http://www.commlawblog.com/2011/03/articles/broadcast/to-serve-broadcasters/want to save the TV Broadcast industry, so not all is lost.....YET !!
Kerry, Snowe Intro Spectrum Inventory and Incentive Auction Bil
WASHINGTON: A bi-partisan bill ordering a spectrum inventory and authorizing TV spectrum incentive auctions was rolled out this week in the Senate. Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), included both in their “Reforming Airwaves by Developing Incentives and Opportunistic Sharing,” or RADIOS Act.
“Incentive auctions as proposed in the National Broadband Plan and the Initiative are commendable, but must be part of a more comprehensive approach by also promoting technological innovation and providing for a more robust management system,” the two said in a joint statement.
Incentive auctions in the broadband plan are intended to encourage broadcasters to turn over spectrum for wireless broadband. The RADIOS bill is said to be a “modified version” of legislation previously introduced by the pair. Both sponsored an incentive auction bill last year, and an inventory bill in 2009. RADIOS orders the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to conduct a comprehensive spectrum inventory and surveys to determine existing uses.
“Such data would provide a more detailed and up-to-date understanding of how spectrum is currently being used and by whom--data essential to sound policy decisions and spectrum management,” they said. “In addition, the legislation requires greater collaboration between the FCC and NTIA on spectrum policy and management-related issues, implementation of spectrum sharing and reuse programs, as well as more market-based incentives to promote efficient spectrum use.”
The legislation also calls for a cost-benefit analysis of relocating incumbent users and notes that legacy wireless services could be made more efficient with new technology. It additionally allows for establishing femtocell Wi-Fi hot spots “in all publicly accessible federal buildings as well as streamline federal rights-of-way and wireless tower sitings on federal buildings.” Doing so would provide additional broadband coverage at minimal costs to taxpayers, the two reasoned.
“The analysis this legislation demands will help drive innovation, encourage competition, and create jobs, all while lowering prices for consumers in Massachusetts and across the country,” Kerry said.
Snowe noted the growth in wireless applications and use, and said the “government’s current spectrum management framework is inefficient and has not kept up with technological advancements to ensure providers have the necessary wireless capacity to meet growing demand for this finite resource.”
-- Deborah D. McAdams
Link to Original article below, Re-posted here with permission.
http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/114782
________________________________________________________________
They call this a "BI-PARTISAN BILL", but Olympia Snowe is widely known to be a RINO, which stand for "Republican in name only", and she leans heavily towards what ever the Democrats want, especially when they need a swing vote.
Merely a case of NO TESTICULAR FORTITUDE on her part, and you don't have to be male to have TESTICULAR FORTITUDE, which is an original phrase coined by me, which basically means that they don't have the will power to stand by their own convictions, but do lean which ever way the political wind blows.
You may notice they are still asking TV Broadcasters to give up their spectrum, even after the discovery that AT&T, VERIZON, and TIME WARNER CABLE are setting on $15 BILLION of unused spectrum. Can you say ROBBER BARONS? I can !!
WASHINGTON: A bi-partisan bill ordering a spectrum inventory and authorizing TV spectrum incentive auctions was rolled out this week in the Senate. Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), included both in their “Reforming Airwaves by Developing Incentives and Opportunistic Sharing,” or RADIOS Act.
“Incentive auctions as proposed in the National Broadband Plan and the Initiative are commendable, but must be part of a more comprehensive approach by also promoting technological innovation and providing for a more robust management system,” the two said in a joint statement.
Incentive auctions in the broadband plan are intended to encourage broadcasters to turn over spectrum for wireless broadband. The RADIOS bill is said to be a “modified version” of legislation previously introduced by the pair. Both sponsored an incentive auction bill last year, and an inventory bill in 2009. RADIOS orders the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to conduct a comprehensive spectrum inventory and surveys to determine existing uses.
“Such data would provide a more detailed and up-to-date understanding of how spectrum is currently being used and by whom--data essential to sound policy decisions and spectrum management,” they said. “In addition, the legislation requires greater collaboration between the FCC and NTIA on spectrum policy and management-related issues, implementation of spectrum sharing and reuse programs, as well as more market-based incentives to promote efficient spectrum use.”
The legislation also calls for a cost-benefit analysis of relocating incumbent users and notes that legacy wireless services could be made more efficient with new technology. It additionally allows for establishing femtocell Wi-Fi hot spots “in all publicly accessible federal buildings as well as streamline federal rights-of-way and wireless tower sitings on federal buildings.” Doing so would provide additional broadband coverage at minimal costs to taxpayers, the two reasoned.
“The analysis this legislation demands will help drive innovation, encourage competition, and create jobs, all while lowering prices for consumers in Massachusetts and across the country,” Kerry said.
Snowe noted the growth in wireless applications and use, and said the “government’s current spectrum management framework is inefficient and has not kept up with technological advancements to ensure providers have the necessary wireless capacity to meet growing demand for this finite resource.”
-- Deborah D. McAdams
Link to Original article below, Re-posted here with permission.
http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/114782
________________________________________________________________
They call this a "BI-PARTISAN BILL", but Olympia Snowe is widely known to be a RINO, which stand for "Republican in name only", and she leans heavily towards what ever the Democrats want, especially when they need a swing vote.
Merely a case of NO TESTICULAR FORTITUDE on her part, and you don't have to be male to have TESTICULAR FORTITUDE, which is an original phrase coined by me, which basically means that they don't have the will power to stand by their own convictions, but do lean which ever way the political wind blows.
You may notice they are still asking TV Broadcasters to give up their spectrum, even after the discovery that AT&T, VERIZON, and TIME WARNER CABLE are setting on $15 BILLION of unused spectrum. Can you say ROBBER BARONS? I can !!
Last edited:
HR 607 From the ARRL website http://www.arrl.org/hr-607
HR 607- HR 607
On February 10, 2011, Rep. Peter King (R-NY), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, introduced H.R. 607, the “Broadband for First Responders Act of 2011,” which has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee (which handles telecommunications legislation). The bill addresses certain spectrum management issues including the creation and maintenance of a nationwide Public Safety broadband network.
As part of that network, the Bill provides for the allocation of the so-called “D-Block” of spectrum in the 700 MHz range for Public Safety use. HR 607 uniquely, provides for the reallocation of other spectrum for auction to commercial users, in order to offset the loss of revenue that would occur as the result of the allocation of the D-Block to Public Safety instead of commercial auction. H.R. 607 lists, among the bands to be reallocated for commercial auction within ten years of the passage of the Bill, the paired bands 420-440 MHz and 450-470 MHz.
The inclusion of most of the Amateur 70-cm spectrum as one of the replacement bands is a major problem. The 420-440 MHz band is not Public Safety spectrum and should not be included in any spectrum swap of Public Safety allocations.
While the ARRL and all Amateurs support the work of Public Safety and recognize their need for dedicated spectrum which would promote interoperability, the ARRL vigorously opposes HR 607 in its present form. HR 607 is a direct threat to our limited spectrum and the ARRL encourages all amateurs to appropriately voice their opposition to this bill.
HR 607- HR 607
On February 10, 2011, Rep. Peter King (R-NY), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, introduced H.R. 607, the “Broadband for First Responders Act of 2011,” which has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee (which handles telecommunications legislation). The bill addresses certain spectrum management issues including the creation and maintenance of a nationwide Public Safety broadband network.
As part of that network, the Bill provides for the allocation of the so-called “D-Block” of spectrum in the 700 MHz range for Public Safety use. HR 607 uniquely, provides for the reallocation of other spectrum for auction to commercial users, in order to offset the loss of revenue that would occur as the result of the allocation of the D-Block to Public Safety instead of commercial auction. H.R. 607 lists, among the bands to be reallocated for commercial auction within ten years of the passage of the Bill, the paired bands 420-440 MHz and 450-470 MHz.
The inclusion of most of the Amateur 70-cm spectrum as one of the replacement bands is a major problem. The 420-440 MHz band is not Public Safety spectrum and should not be included in any spectrum swap of Public Safety allocations.
While the ARRL and all Amateurs support the work of Public Safety and recognize their need for dedicated spectrum which would promote interoperability, the ARRL vigorously opposes HR 607 in its present form. HR 607 is a direct threat to our limited spectrum and the ARRL encourages all amateurs to appropriately voice their opposition to this bill.
Proof that the FCC is run by clueless idiots who take directions from their masters in the phone company without a single clue as to the damage they are going to cause.
Apart from all of the other issues, I would like to see them tell DoD that national defense should take a back seat to downloading porn at 4G speeds.
Peter king is a buffoon.
Apart from all of the other issues, I would like to see them tell DoD that national defense should take a back seat to downloading porn at 4G speeds.
Peter king is a buffoon.
More "About the money" comments
"provides for the reallocation of other spectrum for auction to commercial users, in order to offset the loss of revenue that would occur as the result of the allocation of the D-Block to Public Safety instead of commercial auction."
Again, as I have pointed out sooooo many times, this statement proves it is all about the money. There should be no financial loss, as this portion of the band was surrendered by UHF broadcasters, and was already supposed to be allocated to public service agencies in the transition in the first place. It was part of the former UHF TV band, so who is going to lose if they use it as it was intended in the first place? The TV Broadcasters have already suffered financial loss because of it.
That was part of the "LOGIC" given for the transition in the first place. D-block was supposed to be given to first responders in the first place. They didn't give a dam about the "loss of revenue that would occur as the result" from the DTV Transition, as absolutely no tax breaks or incentives were given to TV Broadcasters. And some are still paying the debt for that in many cases.
20 years ago, no one really gave a dam or even paid any attention to the radio spectrum in general, as it was the unseen public resource that only taxi cabs, public safety workers, Ham Radio Geeks and radio DX'ers cared about, but once CELL PHONES became popular, the broadband industry turned into a bunch of Robber Barons taking a phrase from the past, and started an all out campaign to steal a public resource for their own benefit.
Compare this to a national forest where logging company A comes along and is granted the right to take all of the trees they want, and to take all of the profits with them. I don't think the American Public would be comfortable with this scenario, but they are to blind to see this as the same thing, which it is.
This is nothing short of capitalism out of control. People always accuse the GOP as being sided with the rich, but it looks like this is being done by Osama's goon squad, so how can the GOP be the bad guy in this latest raping of an American "PUBLIC RESOURCE" for private profit, on the backs of the technologically gullible American SHEEPLE.
The Broad Band Industry could settle this nations debt in a few short years if they only devoted a portion of their profit to that purpose for their use of a public resource, and if this ever headed in that direction, then i wouldn't have as big a problem with it as I do now. There should be some type of pay back to the American SHEEPLE for us allowing them to use "OUR RADIO SPECTRUM", as TV Broadcasters have had to do since they were first "ALLOWED" to use the spectrum. Why should the Broad Band industry get a free ride?
"provides for the reallocation of other spectrum for auction to commercial users, in order to offset the loss of revenue that would occur as the result of the allocation of the D-Block to Public Safety instead of commercial auction."
Again, as I have pointed out sooooo many times, this statement proves it is all about the money. There should be no financial loss, as this portion of the band was surrendered by UHF broadcasters, and was already supposed to be allocated to public service agencies in the transition in the first place. It was part of the former UHF TV band, so who is going to lose if they use it as it was intended in the first place? The TV Broadcasters have already suffered financial loss because of it.
That was part of the "LOGIC" given for the transition in the first place. D-block was supposed to be given to first responders in the first place. They didn't give a dam about the "loss of revenue that would occur as the result" from the DTV Transition, as absolutely no tax breaks or incentives were given to TV Broadcasters. And some are still paying the debt for that in many cases.
20 years ago, no one really gave a dam or even paid any attention to the radio spectrum in general, as it was the unseen public resource that only taxi cabs, public safety workers, Ham Radio Geeks and radio DX'ers cared about, but once CELL PHONES became popular, the broadband industry turned into a bunch of Robber Barons taking a phrase from the past, and started an all out campaign to steal a public resource for their own benefit.
Compare this to a national forest where logging company A comes along and is granted the right to take all of the trees they want, and to take all of the profits with them. I don't think the American Public would be comfortable with this scenario, but they are to blind to see this as the same thing, which it is.
This is nothing short of capitalism out of control. People always accuse the GOP as being sided with the rich, but it looks like this is being done by Osama's goon squad, so how can the GOP be the bad guy in this latest raping of an American "PUBLIC RESOURCE" for private profit, on the backs of the technologically gullible American SHEEPLE.
The Broad Band Industry could settle this nations debt in a few short years if they only devoted a portion of their profit to that purpose for their use of a public resource, and if this ever headed in that direction, then i wouldn't have as big a problem with it as I do now. There should be some type of pay back to the American SHEEPLE for us allowing them to use "OUR RADIO SPECTRUM", as TV Broadcasters have had to do since they were first "ALLOWED" to use the spectrum. Why should the Broad Band industry get a free ride?
QUOTE Nothing should come of this. Don't forget that the FRS/GMRS band in the 460 MHz range is also included, and would mean that any service in that band would have to content with Wal-Mart walkie-talkies for years to come. I can't see any telecom company wanting to own such spectrum.
They will just come along and outlaw the FRS/GMRS equipment and make the use of it criminal to protect the "Commercial Interests" who want the resource for themselves. The SHEEPLE will never win in this spectrum battle, as the commercial interests WILL ALWAYS WIN when greed and dollars are involved. Just like the windmills on Poor Mountain. It is my prediction that The county administration will make the needed changes, regardless of what the citizens desires are in regards to the wind mills. Consensus is around 80% against for now !!
Everyone (Mostly the younger generation) seems to put to much faith in the Government to do the right thing, but if they had been doing the right thing (Which is the peoples work, and not that of big business) we would not be in the shape we are in now in this country in regards to deficits. In the OLD DAYS, if you wanted to start a business, you did it all yourself, and the only thing government was doing was issuing a business permit.
Now everyone thinks is OK to use taxpayer dollars to "CREATE JOBS", but all that does is give business a tax free status for 10 or 20 years, and puts that missing revenue that an old fashioned business would have been contributing from the beginning back onto the tax payer to make up. Now is that a proper example of "Doing the peoples work"? I don't think so, but in case you didn't know, lobbyists now control this nation, and there is only one thing we can do to combat this and that is to WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN.
There are a lot of people from the older generations who have observed the decline of this nation, under control of lobbyists and big business, and are very tired if it, and we want this to STOP. Call us gun toting middle class radicals if you want too, but all we want is for the government to observe the U.S. Constitution, which politicians selectively observe when it benefits them, and then choose to ignore when it does not suit them. They take oaths to uphold this sacred document, and then turn right around an desecrate it when it fits the situation. If you think about it, what we have now is the old Hippy Generation of ultra liberals running our government, and a lot of people did not agree with their agenda then, and still don't today. REPLACE EM ALL !!
They will just come along and outlaw the FRS/GMRS equipment and make the use of it criminal to protect the "Commercial Interests" who want the resource for themselves. The SHEEPLE will never win in this spectrum battle, as the commercial interests WILL ALWAYS WIN when greed and dollars are involved. Just like the windmills on Poor Mountain. It is my prediction that The county administration will make the needed changes, regardless of what the citizens desires are in regards to the wind mills. Consensus is around 80% against for now !!
Everyone (Mostly the younger generation) seems to put to much faith in the Government to do the right thing, but if they had been doing the right thing (Which is the peoples work, and not that of big business) we would not be in the shape we are in now in this country in regards to deficits. In the OLD DAYS, if you wanted to start a business, you did it all yourself, and the only thing government was doing was issuing a business permit.
Now everyone thinks is OK to use taxpayer dollars to "CREATE JOBS", but all that does is give business a tax free status for 10 or 20 years, and puts that missing revenue that an old fashioned business would have been contributing from the beginning back onto the tax payer to make up. Now is that a proper example of "Doing the peoples work"? I don't think so, but in case you didn't know, lobbyists now control this nation, and there is only one thing we can do to combat this and that is to WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN.
There are a lot of people from the older generations who have observed the decline of this nation, under control of lobbyists and big business, and are very tired if it, and we want this to STOP. Call us gun toting middle class radicals if you want too, but all we want is for the government to observe the U.S. Constitution, which politicians selectively observe when it benefits them, and then choose to ignore when it does not suit them. They take oaths to uphold this sacred document, and then turn right around an desecrate it when it fits the situation. If you think about it, what we have now is the old Hippy Generation of ultra liberals running our government, and a lot of people did not agree with their agenda then, and still don't today. REPLACE EM ALL !!
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Legislative Alert
From the SBE Website
New Senate Bill would add engineering expertise to FCC Commissioner's Offices
March 18, 2011 - Senator Olympia Snow (R-ME) and Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) have introduced Senate Bill 611, "A Bill to provide greater technical resources to FCC Commissioners." The bill was introduced yesterday, March 17. Senate Bill 611 is, in affect, a replacement bill for S.2881 that was introduced by the same two senators last year. That bill died as a result of procedural issues. The Society of Broadcast Engineers has been very active in encouraging the introduction and eventual passing of this bill and has worked closely with Senator Snowe's office for more than a year.
SBE has also been working to encourage a companion bill in the House. Earlier this week, a group of SBE leadership, led by SBE President, Vinny Lopez, made 12 visits to Congressional offices in Washington (reported on Wednesday in SBE-news), and received a favorable response from many of them. Our hope is that a House Bill will soon follow.
The text of S.611 has not yet been released but it is expected to be similar to last year's bill, which was later coupled to a separate bill introduced by Senator Snow which called for a study of FCC engineering resources.
The primary objective of S.611 is to add scientific expertise at the FCC's policy level by authorizing each FCC Commissioner to add one additional professional assistant to the three they currently have. The Bill would require that the new assistants be either electrical engineers or computer scientists. The three professional assistants each Commissioner now has are either lawyers or economists.
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Finally, one of my states politicians has done something I actually approve of. I guess an occasional miracle still happens in Government. They did leave out Broadcast engineers, who used to populate the FCC board heavily, but they carry less clout than in the past, and have most likely have, or will be replaced by Broadband advocates.
From the SBE Website
New Senate Bill would add engineering expertise to FCC Commissioner's Offices
March 18, 2011 - Senator Olympia Snow (R-ME) and Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) have introduced Senate Bill 611, "A Bill to provide greater technical resources to FCC Commissioners." The bill was introduced yesterday, March 17. Senate Bill 611 is, in affect, a replacement bill for S.2881 that was introduced by the same two senators last year. That bill died as a result of procedural issues. The Society of Broadcast Engineers has been very active in encouraging the introduction and eventual passing of this bill and has worked closely with Senator Snowe's office for more than a year.
SBE has also been working to encourage a companion bill in the House. Earlier this week, a group of SBE leadership, led by SBE President, Vinny Lopez, made 12 visits to Congressional offices in Washington (reported on Wednesday in SBE-news), and received a favorable response from many of them. Our hope is that a House Bill will soon follow.
The text of S.611 has not yet been released but it is expected to be similar to last year's bill, which was later coupled to a separate bill introduced by Senator Snow which called for a study of FCC engineering resources.
The primary objective of S.611 is to add scientific expertise at the FCC's policy level by authorizing each FCC Commissioner to add one additional professional assistant to the three they currently have. The Bill would require that the new assistants be either electrical engineers or computer scientists. The three professional assistants each Commissioner now has are either lawyers or economists.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, one of my states politicians has done something I actually approve of. I guess an occasional miracle still happens in Government. They did leave out Broadcast engineers, who used to populate the FCC board heavily, but they carry less clout than in the past, and have most likely have, or will be replaced by Broadband advocates.
Wireless Lobbies Ask FCC to Clear TV From Ch. 51
From TV Technology magazine - Wireless Lobbies Ask FCC to Clear TV From Ch. 51
WASHINGTON: The two major wireless industry lobbies have asked federal regulators to boot broadcasters off Channel 51. CTIA--The Wireless Association and the Rural Cellular Association have filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission asking for a license freeze on Ch. 51, and to eventually clear the bandwidth for their constituents. The lobbies say broadcasters on the frequency are interfering with adjacent-channel wireless service.
“Petitioners requests that the commission: Revise its rules to prohibit future licensing of TV broadcast stations on Ch. 51; implement freezes, effective immediately, on the acceptance, processing and grant of applications for new or modified broadcast facilities seeking to operate on Ch. 51; and accelerate clearance of Ch. 51 where incumbent broadcasters reach voluntary agreements to relocate to an alternate channel,” the petition states.
Channel 51 lies at the top end of the broadcast TV spectrum swath at 698 MHz. Broadcasters also previously transmitted on Chs. 52-69, but those licenses were reallocated for wireless service in the wake of the DTV transition. The FCC auctioned them off in “blocks” three years ago. Ch. 51 is adjacent to the A Block, consisting of 176 licenses at 698 to 704 MHz, and 728 to734 MHz.
A Block winners included Verizon, which snagged 25 licenses; U.S. Cellular, also 25; Cavalier, 23; CenturyTel, 21; Cell South, 14; Cox, 14, Continuum, 10, LL License, five; Triad, four; Miller, three; and others with fewer than three. Two are scheduled to be re-auctioned in July--one for 12 MHz in Wheeling, W.V., and another for 12 MHz in Lubbock, Texas.
The CTIA, the members of which include Verizon, Cox and Cavalier among others, used the Administration’s goal of creating nationwide wireless broadband as justification for booting broadcasters from Ch. 51. The Obama FCC has proposed taking another 120 MHz of broadcast spectrum and reallocating it for wireless services.
“The National Broadband Plan emphasized the deployment of additional spectrum for wireless broadband spectrum as key policy objective of the Commission. While the 700 MHz spectrum in particular is ideally suited for innovative wireless broadband services, licensees in the A Block face technical challenges caused by the presence of broadcast TV services on Ch. 51,” the filing said.
“In light of the significant spectrum crunch and the exponentially increasing demand for mobile broadband services in the United States, consumers cannot afford to have the use of licensed wireless broadband spectrum prevented by the threat of future harmful interference.”
It’s the broadcasters who are legally protected from harmful interference caused by the A Block winners, notes Mitchell Lazarus at Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth’s Comm Law Blog.
“The wireless companies could have solved their problem, in principle, by leaving the lower part of A Block vacant as a guard band,” he wrote. “That would cost a lot of money. Instead, despite not having paid for it, they want the 6 MHz of Ch. 51 to be vacant.”
Lazarus said the petition had not yet been put out for comment by the FCC.
-- Deborah D. McAdams
------------------------------
I smell a dead rat in the mix here. Does the CTIA sound familiar to you? It should if you have been watching TV for the last few years. They are the agency that helped promote the "MAGIC RABBIT EARS" during the DTV transition period. Is it possible they were trying to sabotage DTV all along, by promoting the "MAGIC RABBIT EARS" which they knew would not work well? Especially with the original assigned power levels. Something is not right here, and the truth may never be known.
“The wireless companies could have solved their problem, in principle, by leaving the lower part of A Block vacant as a guard band,” he wrote. “That would cost a lot of money. Instead, despite not having paid for it, they want the 6 MHz of Ch. 51 to be vacant.” It seems to me that this is like asking for a free ride, which they WILL BE GRANTED, and that is a prediction. The Robber Barons will not be stopped, and it's all about the money.
This is a brief look into how Government really works The two major wireless industry lobbies, with lobbies being the key word here. this proves that the wants and wishes of the people are ALWAYS TRUMPED BY BIG BUSINESS AND LOBBYISTS. They don't want to loose money by creating a 2mHz guard band, they just want the TV Broadcasters to GET THE HELL OUT OF THEIR WAY because their cash cow is mighty hungry, and there simply is no other way to look at it if your brain works on the logic principal, which mine does !! This flies directly in line with the definition of Robber Barons, who will take a resource by any means necessary to feed the need for greed as history has shown many times over !!
Just for fun, http://www.singsnap.com/karaoke/r/b8a1becb8
From TV Technology magazine - Wireless Lobbies Ask FCC to Clear TV From Ch. 51
WASHINGTON: The two major wireless industry lobbies have asked federal regulators to boot broadcasters off Channel 51. CTIA--The Wireless Association and the Rural Cellular Association have filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission asking for a license freeze on Ch. 51, and to eventually clear the bandwidth for their constituents. The lobbies say broadcasters on the frequency are interfering with adjacent-channel wireless service.
“Petitioners requests that the commission: Revise its rules to prohibit future licensing of TV broadcast stations on Ch. 51; implement freezes, effective immediately, on the acceptance, processing and grant of applications for new or modified broadcast facilities seeking to operate on Ch. 51; and accelerate clearance of Ch. 51 where incumbent broadcasters reach voluntary agreements to relocate to an alternate channel,” the petition states.
Channel 51 lies at the top end of the broadcast TV spectrum swath at 698 MHz. Broadcasters also previously transmitted on Chs. 52-69, but those licenses were reallocated for wireless service in the wake of the DTV transition. The FCC auctioned them off in “blocks” three years ago. Ch. 51 is adjacent to the A Block, consisting of 176 licenses at 698 to 704 MHz, and 728 to734 MHz.
A Block winners included Verizon, which snagged 25 licenses; U.S. Cellular, also 25; Cavalier, 23; CenturyTel, 21; Cell South, 14; Cox, 14, Continuum, 10, LL License, five; Triad, four; Miller, three; and others with fewer than three. Two are scheduled to be re-auctioned in July--one for 12 MHz in Wheeling, W.V., and another for 12 MHz in Lubbock, Texas.
The CTIA, the members of which include Verizon, Cox and Cavalier among others, used the Administration’s goal of creating nationwide wireless broadband as justification for booting broadcasters from Ch. 51. The Obama FCC has proposed taking another 120 MHz of broadcast spectrum and reallocating it for wireless services.
“The National Broadband Plan emphasized the deployment of additional spectrum for wireless broadband spectrum as key policy objective of the Commission. While the 700 MHz spectrum in particular is ideally suited for innovative wireless broadband services, licensees in the A Block face technical challenges caused by the presence of broadcast TV services on Ch. 51,” the filing said.
“In light of the significant spectrum crunch and the exponentially increasing demand for mobile broadband services in the United States, consumers cannot afford to have the use of licensed wireless broadband spectrum prevented by the threat of future harmful interference.”
It’s the broadcasters who are legally protected from harmful interference caused by the A Block winners, notes Mitchell Lazarus at Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth’s Comm Law Blog.
“The wireless companies could have solved their problem, in principle, by leaving the lower part of A Block vacant as a guard band,” he wrote. “That would cost a lot of money. Instead, despite not having paid for it, they want the 6 MHz of Ch. 51 to be vacant.”
Lazarus said the petition had not yet been put out for comment by the FCC.
-- Deborah D. McAdams
------------------------------
I smell a dead rat in the mix here. Does the CTIA sound familiar to you? It should if you have been watching TV for the last few years. They are the agency that helped promote the "MAGIC RABBIT EARS" during the DTV transition period. Is it possible they were trying to sabotage DTV all along, by promoting the "MAGIC RABBIT EARS" which they knew would not work well? Especially with the original assigned power levels. Something is not right here, and the truth may never be known.
“The wireless companies could have solved their problem, in principle, by leaving the lower part of A Block vacant as a guard band,” he wrote. “That would cost a lot of money. Instead, despite not having paid for it, they want the 6 MHz of Ch. 51 to be vacant.” It seems to me that this is like asking for a free ride, which they WILL BE GRANTED, and that is a prediction. The Robber Barons will not be stopped, and it's all about the money.
This is a brief look into how Government really works The two major wireless industry lobbies, with lobbies being the key word here. this proves that the wants and wishes of the people are ALWAYS TRUMPED BY BIG BUSINESS AND LOBBYISTS. They don't want to loose money by creating a 2mHz guard band, they just want the TV Broadcasters to GET THE HELL OUT OF THEIR WAY because their cash cow is mighty hungry, and there simply is no other way to look at it if your brain works on the logic principal, which mine does !! This flies directly in line with the definition of Robber Barons, who will take a resource by any means necessary to feed the need for greed as history has shown many times over !!
Just for fun, http://www.singsnap.com/karaoke/r/b8a1becb8
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I think you mean the CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) when it comes to the "Magic Rabbit Ears", but since the CEA and CTIA (Cell Telephone Industry Association) have been joined at the hip in their goose step toward world domination it doesn't surprise me that they would get confused.:becky:
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Spectrum Worries From a Different Direction
James O' Neal is the Technology Editor of TV Technology.
http://www.tvtechnology.com/blog/117064
As if broadcasters didn't have enough on their plates, a new issue is getting publicity and could affect the way we do things. I'm speaking of the allocation of some spectrum in the L-band region to a Virginia-based company—dba LightSquared—for construction of a wideband 4G communications system. Thousands of cell sites are planned in the ultimate deployment of this wireless network.
So you're saying, how does this affect me? Shouldn't I be more worried about the much publicized 120 MHz land grab plan in the UHF broadcast region?
Well, yes and no.
One of the frequency bands planned for use in this 4G rollout spans 1525 to 1559 MHz.
You may ask, isn't that quite a ways from the 950 MHz to 1450 MHz IF range that's used with my sat receivers?
Yes, but if you're tuned in to GPS technology, you'll instantly recognize that it's right below the 1559 to 1610 MHz spectrum chunk where GPS operates. And to some, this is a bit too close for comfort, even though LightSquared folks say they can solve any and all problems with filters. (Now, where have I heard that before?)
Garmin, one of the big purveyors of GPS technology, was naturally a bit curious about this and decided to do their own testing to see what might happen when LightSquared (or anyone else) fired up on GPS-adjacent frequencies. A full report of their findings was hand-carried to the Commission on Jan. 20 this year, and contains some interesting reading.
Here's part of the executive summary:
In careful, experimental testing at Garmin using the technical details (power, frequency, modulation bandwidth) of the proposed LightSquared system, two common state-of-the-art Garmin GPS receivers experienced significant jamming within a radius of several miles from a simulated LightSquared transmitter.
The report, titled "Experimental Evidence of Wide Area GPS Jamming That Will Result from LightSquared's Proposal to Convert Portions of L band 1 to High Power Terrestrial Broadband," states that one of Garmin's consumer GPS models was knocked for a loop at a distance of 3.6 miles and that it "lost a fix" at 0.66 miles from the interfering transmitter. In another run, Garmin's GNS 430w FAA-certified general aviation navigational receiver began to experience problems at slightly less than 14 miles from the G4 transmitter simulator, and was completely wiped out, nav fix-wise, at 5.6 miles from the interfering RF test source.
The Garmin report noted that LightSquared's business plan calls ultimately for operation of as many as 40,000 high-power transmitters, with outputs of more than 15,000 watts at a site. In amplifying on this, Garmin stated:
"The operation of so many high powered transmitters so close in frequency to the GPS operating frequency (1575.42 MHz) will create a disastrous interference problem for GPS receiver operation to the point where GPS receivers will cease to operate (complete loss of fix) when in the vicinity of these transmitters."
So, as a broadcaster how does this affect you if and when LightSquared does deploy its full system?
Your first inclination may be that it's just a simple notice to your news department folks that they might have to fall back to Google Maps to get to some of their assigned stories. However, there could potentially be a lot more at stake.
If a LightSquared transmitter site gets built close enough to your operation and something should go wrong, despite LightSquared's pleadings that they won't (40,000 sites are a lot to monitor and keep maintained), you could have problems of a more direct nature.
Most master clock systems lock themselves up with GPS to ensure accurate time. If your clock reference source "loses fix," then your station clocks are going to start drifting. This could cause some very sloppy network "joins." Also, if you're running "lights-out" automation, problems could be even more severe before the cause was detected. I can also envision some fallout in editing operations from timecode generators getting the wrong time-of-day reference.
If you have a sat truck, how does the operator do aimings for uplinks? With those "just push a button" systems that automatically determine vehicle location and then direct the dish at your satellite of choice, operations could be a bit problematic if the truck is parked within the "jamming" distance from a terrestrial GPS-interference source. Even if you're doing manual aiming and setup, not having accurate latitude and longitude information from a GPS receiver could require some extra effort on the truck operator's part.
Drilling into loss-of-GPS scenarios just a bit deeper, possible loss of the 20 UHF channels mentioned earlier, could well force fairly wide adoption of single frequency networks to allow broadcasters to provide service with fewer channels. The fly in the ointment here is that the multiple transmitters in an SFN have to be locked to a common reference, and the reference of choice here is GPS.
The really big "gotcha" could be in the successful deployment of Mobile DTV, which is very much dependent on GPS reference.
These are some of the areas that come to mind in which a modern broadcast facility depends on GPS technology. You can probably think of several more.
I certainly wish LightSquared well, as I'm a firm believer in free enterprise. I also recognize the problems that this company, or anyone else, has had or is having in locating RF spectrum for any use these days. However, I'm also concerned that this FCC bless-off just may be a little too close for comfort and could potentially impact many more users of an established technology—including broadcasters—than anything else that's surfaced in recent years.
Time will tell.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
But the FCC doesn't care about any of this because they are more interested in the revenue from the radio spectrum, than the problems they will cause to existing users due to there being a lack of technically oriented staff members who don't look at the dollar signs first !! Same old Same old....
Re posted from TV Technology magazine
http://www.tvtechnology.com/blog/117064
James O' Neal is the Technology Editor of TV Technology.
http://www.tvtechnology.com/blog/117064
As if broadcasters didn't have enough on their plates, a new issue is getting publicity and could affect the way we do things. I'm speaking of the allocation of some spectrum in the L-band region to a Virginia-based company—dba LightSquared—for construction of a wideband 4G communications system. Thousands of cell sites are planned in the ultimate deployment of this wireless network.
So you're saying, how does this affect me? Shouldn't I be more worried about the much publicized 120 MHz land grab plan in the UHF broadcast region?
Well, yes and no.
One of the frequency bands planned for use in this 4G rollout spans 1525 to 1559 MHz.
You may ask, isn't that quite a ways from the 950 MHz to 1450 MHz IF range that's used with my sat receivers?
Yes, but if you're tuned in to GPS technology, you'll instantly recognize that it's right below the 1559 to 1610 MHz spectrum chunk where GPS operates. And to some, this is a bit too close for comfort, even though LightSquared folks say they can solve any and all problems with filters. (Now, where have I heard that before?)
Garmin, one of the big purveyors of GPS technology, was naturally a bit curious about this and decided to do their own testing to see what might happen when LightSquared (or anyone else) fired up on GPS-adjacent frequencies. A full report of their findings was hand-carried to the Commission on Jan. 20 this year, and contains some interesting reading.
Here's part of the executive summary:
In careful, experimental testing at Garmin using the technical details (power, frequency, modulation bandwidth) of the proposed LightSquared system, two common state-of-the-art Garmin GPS receivers experienced significant jamming within a radius of several miles from a simulated LightSquared transmitter.
The report, titled "Experimental Evidence of Wide Area GPS Jamming That Will Result from LightSquared's Proposal to Convert Portions of L band 1 to High Power Terrestrial Broadband," states that one of Garmin's consumer GPS models was knocked for a loop at a distance of 3.6 miles and that it "lost a fix" at 0.66 miles from the interfering transmitter. In another run, Garmin's GNS 430w FAA-certified general aviation navigational receiver began to experience problems at slightly less than 14 miles from the G4 transmitter simulator, and was completely wiped out, nav fix-wise, at 5.6 miles from the interfering RF test source.
The Garmin report noted that LightSquared's business plan calls ultimately for operation of as many as 40,000 high-power transmitters, with outputs of more than 15,000 watts at a site. In amplifying on this, Garmin stated:
"The operation of so many high powered transmitters so close in frequency to the GPS operating frequency (1575.42 MHz) will create a disastrous interference problem for GPS receiver operation to the point where GPS receivers will cease to operate (complete loss of fix) when in the vicinity of these transmitters."
So, as a broadcaster how does this affect you if and when LightSquared does deploy its full system?
Your first inclination may be that it's just a simple notice to your news department folks that they might have to fall back to Google Maps to get to some of their assigned stories. However, there could potentially be a lot more at stake.
If a LightSquared transmitter site gets built close enough to your operation and something should go wrong, despite LightSquared's pleadings that they won't (40,000 sites are a lot to monitor and keep maintained), you could have problems of a more direct nature.
Most master clock systems lock themselves up with GPS to ensure accurate time. If your clock reference source "loses fix," then your station clocks are going to start drifting. This could cause some very sloppy network "joins." Also, if you're running "lights-out" automation, problems could be even more severe before the cause was detected. I can also envision some fallout in editing operations from timecode generators getting the wrong time-of-day reference.
If you have a sat truck, how does the operator do aimings for uplinks? With those "just push a button" systems that automatically determine vehicle location and then direct the dish at your satellite of choice, operations could be a bit problematic if the truck is parked within the "jamming" distance from a terrestrial GPS-interference source. Even if you're doing manual aiming and setup, not having accurate latitude and longitude information from a GPS receiver could require some extra effort on the truck operator's part.
Drilling into loss-of-GPS scenarios just a bit deeper, possible loss of the 20 UHF channels mentioned earlier, could well force fairly wide adoption of single frequency networks to allow broadcasters to provide service with fewer channels. The fly in the ointment here is that the multiple transmitters in an SFN have to be locked to a common reference, and the reference of choice here is GPS.
The really big "gotcha" could be in the successful deployment of Mobile DTV, which is very much dependent on GPS reference.
These are some of the areas that come to mind in which a modern broadcast facility depends on GPS technology. You can probably think of several more.
I certainly wish LightSquared well, as I'm a firm believer in free enterprise. I also recognize the problems that this company, or anyone else, has had or is having in locating RF spectrum for any use these days. However, I'm also concerned that this FCC bless-off just may be a little too close for comfort and could potentially impact many more users of an established technology—including broadcasters—than anything else that's surfaced in recent years.
Time will tell.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
But the FCC doesn't care about any of this because they are more interested in the revenue from the radio spectrum, than the problems they will cause to existing users due to there being a lack of technically oriented staff members who don't look at the dollar signs first !! Same old Same old....
Re posted from TV Technology magazine
http://www.tvtechnology.com/blog/117064
Editorial Director Brad Dick takes on FCC Chairman Julius Genachowsksi
Angry birds and Lady Gaga - Broadcast Engineering magazine
Mar 1, 2011 12:00 PM, By Brad Dick, Editorial Director
Angry birds and Lady Gaga
Editorial Director Brad Dick takes on FCC Chairman Julius Genachowsksi and his Feb. 7 speech to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, where he ranted about America’s low ranking in broadband adoption.
Angry birds and Lady Gaga
Obama's FCC continues its hell-bent drive to remake the entire telecommunications infrastructure. This, despite multiple court rulings and congressional warnings to cease and desist. Add to this the chairman's wanton profundity to mislead America with his selective use of facts and data. Combined, we have a mash-up of the Angry Birds game and Lady Gaga.
On Feb. 7, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski spoke to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), where he again ranted about America's low ranking in broadband adoption. According to Genachowski, the United States is last among major nations in broadband adoption. His speech was just another attempt to bolster his case to force broadcasters off the air.
Let's examine our chairman's house of (dis)honesty.
Genachowski often selectively picks data from this year's FCC 706 Report to Congress and his National Broadband Plan in his speeches. Let's examine some of the so-called “facts” the chairman often quotes.
First, as any bureaucrat knows, if the facts don't support your case, just change definitions. In a blatant effort to portray the low rate of broadband adoption, the FCC changed key measurement definitions between the 2009 and 2010 reports. For instance, the definition of “broadband” in the 2009 report was a wired or wireless link with a speeed above 200kB/s.
In order to strengthen the agency's broadband case, beginning with the 2010 report, the FCC redefined broadband to be a wired 4Mb/s or higher service. And, wireless links were no longer counted. Any of you with 3G or 4G connectivity, by FCC definition, do not have broadband.
Under the previous 706 Report definitions, a 3Mb/s wireless link was classified broadband. Under those definitions, the United States was not last, rather 12th, worldwide in broadband adoption. Yet, the FCC simply changed key definitions, and America suddenly drops to 40th (last) on the same list in one year. Dishonesty.
Genachowski also obfuscates the truth in other ways by saying that the United Sates is “last” when compared to other countries. However, the score he mentions represents a composite measurement across multiple survey points and over time, most of which have nothing to do with broadband adoptions!
In fact, the ITIF concluded from the same data that the United States leads Europe in 13 of the 16 indicators, including knowledge (higher education and number of researchers); innovation (corporate and government R&D and scientific publications); information technology (IT investments, e-government and broadband); overall business climate; entrepreneurship (new firms and venture capital); and productivity.
Second, the chairman cleverly ignores data from his own study when it doesn't support the points he's trying to score. America's broadband adoption rate isn't “low” because of a lack of availability; it's because some Americans either don't want broadband or don't have a computer that requires it.
Further chairman fuzzy math … When Genachowski says that “24 million Americans” don't have broadband, that means individuals. However, broadband (like TV) usage should be measured across “households,” not “per-capita.” We don't measure TV set penetration by persons, but by household. Broadband should likewise be measured.
Finally, the ITIF report notes that the FCC's own documentation shows that U.S. broadband implementation is growing 30 percent faster than ever before. But our chairman ignores that truth.
Genachowski's latest the-sky-is-falling speech is little more than a mash-up of the Angry Birds game and Lady Gaga. His speeches may sound good, but they are full of holes and short on truth.
Send comments to: editor@broadcastengineering.com
Re-posted with permission
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally an industry insider with a little clout that is not afraid to speak the truth. He has Orange Julius PEGGED to the letter, just as I have all along, and I agree with his views 100%. Being politically correct sometimes hides the truth, and that is normally intentional, but that is not the case here.
I wonder just how much under the table benefits will come to all who participated in the raping of the American people, and one of its precious resources for the profit of a few (GREEDY BASTARDS) and politicians. This is NOT how our Government is supposed to work FOR the people ...
Angry birds and Lady Gaga - Broadcast Engineering magazine
Mar 1, 2011 12:00 PM, By Brad Dick, Editorial Director
Angry birds and Lady Gaga
Editorial Director Brad Dick takes on FCC Chairman Julius Genachowsksi and his Feb. 7 speech to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, where he ranted about America’s low ranking in broadband adoption.
Angry birds and Lady Gaga
Obama's FCC continues its hell-bent drive to remake the entire telecommunications infrastructure. This, despite multiple court rulings and congressional warnings to cease and desist. Add to this the chairman's wanton profundity to mislead America with his selective use of facts and data. Combined, we have a mash-up of the Angry Birds game and Lady Gaga.
On Feb. 7, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski spoke to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), where he again ranted about America's low ranking in broadband adoption. According to Genachowski, the United States is last among major nations in broadband adoption. His speech was just another attempt to bolster his case to force broadcasters off the air.
Let's examine our chairman's house of (dis)honesty.
Genachowski often selectively picks data from this year's FCC 706 Report to Congress and his National Broadband Plan in his speeches. Let's examine some of the so-called “facts” the chairman often quotes.
First, as any bureaucrat knows, if the facts don't support your case, just change definitions. In a blatant effort to portray the low rate of broadband adoption, the FCC changed key measurement definitions between the 2009 and 2010 reports. For instance, the definition of “broadband” in the 2009 report was a wired or wireless link with a speeed above 200kB/s.
In order to strengthen the agency's broadband case, beginning with the 2010 report, the FCC redefined broadband to be a wired 4Mb/s or higher service. And, wireless links were no longer counted. Any of you with 3G or 4G connectivity, by FCC definition, do not have broadband.
Under the previous 706 Report definitions, a 3Mb/s wireless link was classified broadband. Under those definitions, the United States was not last, rather 12th, worldwide in broadband adoption. Yet, the FCC simply changed key definitions, and America suddenly drops to 40th (last) on the same list in one year. Dishonesty.
Genachowski also obfuscates the truth in other ways by saying that the United Sates is “last” when compared to other countries. However, the score he mentions represents a composite measurement across multiple survey points and over time, most of which have nothing to do with broadband adoptions!
In fact, the ITIF concluded from the same data that the United States leads Europe in 13 of the 16 indicators, including knowledge (higher education and number of researchers); innovation (corporate and government R&D and scientific publications); information technology (IT investments, e-government and broadband); overall business climate; entrepreneurship (new firms and venture capital); and productivity.
Second, the chairman cleverly ignores data from his own study when it doesn't support the points he's trying to score. America's broadband adoption rate isn't “low” because of a lack of availability; it's because some Americans either don't want broadband or don't have a computer that requires it.
Further chairman fuzzy math … When Genachowski says that “24 million Americans” don't have broadband, that means individuals. However, broadband (like TV) usage should be measured across “households,” not “per-capita.” We don't measure TV set penetration by persons, but by household. Broadband should likewise be measured.
Finally, the ITIF report notes that the FCC's own documentation shows that U.S. broadband implementation is growing 30 percent faster than ever before. But our chairman ignores that truth.
Genachowski's latest the-sky-is-falling speech is little more than a mash-up of the Angry Birds game and Lady Gaga. His speeches may sound good, but they are full of holes and short on truth.
Send comments to: editor@broadcastengineering.com
Re-posted with permission
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally an industry insider with a little clout that is not afraid to speak the truth. He has Orange Julius PEGGED to the letter, just as I have all along, and I agree with his views 100%. Being politically correct sometimes hides the truth, and that is normally intentional, but that is not the case here.
I wonder just how much under the table benefits will come to all who participated in the raping of the American people, and one of its precious resources for the profit of a few (GREEDY BASTARDS) and politicians. This is NOT how our Government is supposed to work FOR the people ...
Last edited by a moderator:
I think you mean the CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) when it comes to the "Magic Rabbit Ears", but since the CEA and CTIA (Cell Telephone Industry Association) have been joined at the hip in their goose step toward world domination it doesn't surprise me that they would get confused.
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Not so, this agency has been in existence since 1984, and has not always been simply an advocate of the Cell phone Industry, they now have a much broader role when they were looking for a reason to justify their existence, so they took on the role of Cell Industry advocate to justify their voice and meaning.
From Wiki Pedia
History
CTIA provides a semi-annual industry survey that tracks trends and use patterns in the high-velocity growth market for new devices, new services and consumer choices. Conducted since 1985, these surveys cover direct employment, number of cell sites, major categories of industry revenues, the average local monthly bill, the average length of call and other metrics. The average local monthly bill includes voice and data usage and is developed on a weighted basis, to avoid skewing the figures. It is not an average of averages. No adjustments are made to these figures.[10]
The survey tracks the growing trend toward consumers using more wireless data service, which includes statistics on wireless data revenues and wireless data traffic. The survey also develops information on the number of reported wireless subscriber units or “connections” for the responding systems, and an estimated total wireless connections figure for the United States taking into account non-responding systems, which is quite small, as CTIA receives responses from companies serving more than 95 percent of wireless subscriber connections.
As this history indicates, they have not always been A cell phone only associated industry, as they had to have other interests to justify their existence....and they did have great influence over the advertising and the overall outcome of the transition.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not so, this agency has been in existence since 1984, and has not always been simply an advocate of the Cell phone Industry, they now have a much broader role when they were looking for a reason to justify their existence, so they took on the role of Cell Industry advocate to justify their voice and meaning.
From Wiki Pedia
History
CTIA provides a semi-annual industry survey that tracks trends and use patterns in the high-velocity growth market for new devices, new services and consumer choices. Conducted since 1985, these surveys cover direct employment, number of cell sites, major categories of industry revenues, the average local monthly bill, the average length of call and other metrics. The average local monthly bill includes voice and data usage and is developed on a weighted basis, to avoid skewing the figures. It is not an average of averages. No adjustments are made to these figures.[10]
The survey tracks the growing trend toward consumers using more wireless data service, which includes statistics on wireless data revenues and wireless data traffic. The survey also develops information on the number of reported wireless subscriber units or “connections” for the responding systems, and an estimated total wireless connections figure for the United States taking into account non-responding systems, which is quite small, as CTIA receives responses from companies serving more than 95 percent of wireless subscriber connections.
As this history indicates, they have not always been A cell phone only associated industry, as they had to have other interests to justify their existence....and they did have great influence over the advertising and the overall outcome of the transition.
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Look Out! They're After Our Spectrum! (And they will get it if we don't speak up!!!
Look Out! They're After Our Spectrum!
by Mario Orazio, The Masked Engineer 04.05.2011 From TV Technology magazine
Look Out! They're After Our Spectrum!, by Mario Orazio
You might not have noticed, fellow broadcasters, that "they" are really after our spectrum. Why, just recently Gary Shapiro, venerated leader of the CEA, (or as I like to call 'em, see-ya) and former booster-in-chief of TV set sales, opened the Consumer Electronics Show with a complaint that broadcasters are "squatting" on RF spectrum, impeding our wireless broadband futures. Squatting! Oh my ears and whiskers, as Horace Rumpole might say. Squatting! Let's have a brief review of the "ownership" of the aforementioned television broadcast spectrum, why don't we?
The Communications Act of 1934, the Congressional Act that established the regulation of the U.S. airwaves, enshrined the concept that in the USA, the airwaves belong to the people, and established the Federal Communications Commission to regulate said airwaves. Section 307(a) of that Act declares: "The Commission, if public convenience, interest, or necessity will be served thereby, subject to the limitations of this Act, shall grant to any applicant therefore a station license provided for by this Act."
So, this bargain was struck between the broadcaster and the people who owned the spectrum: we the people will let you use this broadcast channel to ply your trade, subject to the regulations of the FCC, and you, in turn, will use it to serve the public convenience, interest, or necessity by providing entertainment, news, alerts and warnings, and other programming that serves the greater good. All that worked well for a long time, until the demands for RF spectrum began multiplying.
TIMES CHANGE
The UHF television spectrum in the U.S., initially incorporating channels 14 to 82, was largely unused, save by a few entities such as an educational television channel in Houston, Texas, until congress mandated the incorporation of UHF tuners into all TV sets sold, sometime in the 1970s. As time passed, various needs arose, in public service communications and other quarters, and portions of the UHF television spectrum started being allocated to services other than TV. By then, the UHF TV broadcast spectrum stopped at channel 68.
Somebody got the bright idea in the 1980s that high-definition television would be a good thing to do. After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, and research, and testing, and politicking, we reached the point where we decided that we would launch digital television broadcasting, aka DTV. DTV would be, as its name implies, digital, and it would incorporate, in addition to HDTV, the ability to broadcast SDTV, and just plain data. As someone in my past career used to say, "it's not just television broadcasting, it's a digital pipeline into the home."
GOING DIGITAL
In order to make the transition from analog to digital TV, as there was still a considerable supply of unoccupied UHF spectrum around, the FCC lent every broadcast TV station a second channel, and said, "Build a DTV station on it, and someday, you will be required to shut your analog station off, and give up one of the two channels you will temporarily occupy." That happened. We saw it, and it was good. HDTV was, and is, being broadcast, along with, in many cases, multiple subchannels, expanding the services offered by a broadcast station. Plans began to be made for a mobile broadcasting service.
Every U.S. television station spent the money and resources to put a digital signal on the air, then shut off their analog signal, freeing a lot of spectrum in the bargain. Five minutes later, there was a different message: "You broadcast guys are not putting the spectrum to its optimum use. Give it up, so we can use it for wireless data transmission, and we might pay you something for it." Now, we are told we are "squatting".
Gordon Smith, the president of the NAB, got it about right in his response to Mr. Shapiro's comments. He said that there probably isn't enough spectrum in the universe to accommodate this dream of transmitting everything to everyone individually.
And take a look at what these spectrum-enviers have in mind. The chief technology officer of Verizon said that sending all that video-on-demand stuff out over the cell network will probably clog it up royally. So, the answer is to transmit it, one-to-one, via separate RF signals. Sure looks to yours truly like this is a way to wrest RF spectrum from free over-the-air broadcasters and sell it to paid video services.
SPECTRUM USE
And Julius Genachowski, chairman of the FCC, is singing the same tune, saying that broadcasters are not putting the spectrum they occupy to its highest use. Earth to Julius… Get a clue! The FCC was created to serve the public convenience, interest, and necessity! Have you heard, J., that TV antenna sales are at an all-time high in the U.S.? Looks a lot like the public wants to watch free broadcast TV, otherwise why are they buying all those TV antennas? Doesn't that make broadcast television, ipso facto, the "highest use" of the spectrum it is occupying?
We don't yet know, of course, what will come of mobile DTV broadcasting. But many, if not most, DTV stations are filling up their respective 6 MHz blocks with subchannels. There is, for example, a DTV station in the Los Angeles area that carries no HDTV signal, but does carry 7 or 8 SD subchannels. Sandwich mobile into this, and TV broadcasters and the public are getting more and more out of a 6 MHz piece of spectrum.
We have already seen broadcasters get the short end of the stick as far as the spectrum allocations go. The original plan was to put all DTV stations on channels 14-62. They ended up on channels 2-52. That most certainly happened because broadband spectrum lusters realized that low VHF channels stink for digital transmission. Now, broadband spectrum lusters want the whole enchilada. In their perfect world, they would get all that spectrum to use for VOD, and they wouldn't have the broadcasters to compete with any more. But this couldn't happen, could it?
____________________________________________________________________
If you want a little common sense added to a topic, the Masked Engineer is the one for the job. He has also pegged the greedy bastards for what they are. The FCC has forgotten why it exists in the first place. They weren't created to do the lobbying for the broadband industry, but that is exactly what they are doing, and the American people need to RAISE HELL about this raping of a resource that belongs to us, not the FCC or the broadband industry.
OK BITCHER, I remember when you told me this was not true, so where are you now Mr.Know it all?
Look Out! They're After Our Spectrum!
by Mario Orazio, The Masked Engineer 04.05.2011 From TV Technology magazine
Look Out! They're After Our Spectrum!, by Mario Orazio
You might not have noticed, fellow broadcasters, that "they" are really after our spectrum. Why, just recently Gary Shapiro, venerated leader of the CEA, (or as I like to call 'em, see-ya) and former booster-in-chief of TV set sales, opened the Consumer Electronics Show with a complaint that broadcasters are "squatting" on RF spectrum, impeding our wireless broadband futures. Squatting! Oh my ears and whiskers, as Horace Rumpole might say. Squatting! Let's have a brief review of the "ownership" of the aforementioned television broadcast spectrum, why don't we?
The Communications Act of 1934, the Congressional Act that established the regulation of the U.S. airwaves, enshrined the concept that in the USA, the airwaves belong to the people, and established the Federal Communications Commission to regulate said airwaves. Section 307(a) of that Act declares: "The Commission, if public convenience, interest, or necessity will be served thereby, subject to the limitations of this Act, shall grant to any applicant therefore a station license provided for by this Act."
So, this bargain was struck between the broadcaster and the people who owned the spectrum: we the people will let you use this broadcast channel to ply your trade, subject to the regulations of the FCC, and you, in turn, will use it to serve the public convenience, interest, or necessity by providing entertainment, news, alerts and warnings, and other programming that serves the greater good. All that worked well for a long time, until the demands for RF spectrum began multiplying.
TIMES CHANGE
The UHF television spectrum in the U.S., initially incorporating channels 14 to 82, was largely unused, save by a few entities such as an educational television channel in Houston, Texas, until congress mandated the incorporation of UHF tuners into all TV sets sold, sometime in the 1970s. As time passed, various needs arose, in public service communications and other quarters, and portions of the UHF television spectrum started being allocated to services other than TV. By then, the UHF TV broadcast spectrum stopped at channel 68.
Somebody got the bright idea in the 1980s that high-definition television would be a good thing to do. After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, and research, and testing, and politicking, we reached the point where we decided that we would launch digital television broadcasting, aka DTV. DTV would be, as its name implies, digital, and it would incorporate, in addition to HDTV, the ability to broadcast SDTV, and just plain data. As someone in my past career used to say, "it's not just television broadcasting, it's a digital pipeline into the home."
GOING DIGITAL
In order to make the transition from analog to digital TV, as there was still a considerable supply of unoccupied UHF spectrum around, the FCC lent every broadcast TV station a second channel, and said, "Build a DTV station on it, and someday, you will be required to shut your analog station off, and give up one of the two channels you will temporarily occupy." That happened. We saw it, and it was good. HDTV was, and is, being broadcast, along with, in many cases, multiple subchannels, expanding the services offered by a broadcast station. Plans began to be made for a mobile broadcasting service.
Every U.S. television station spent the money and resources to put a digital signal on the air, then shut off their analog signal, freeing a lot of spectrum in the bargain. Five minutes later, there was a different message: "You broadcast guys are not putting the spectrum to its optimum use. Give it up, so we can use it for wireless data transmission, and we might pay you something for it." Now, we are told we are "squatting".
Gordon Smith, the president of the NAB, got it about right in his response to Mr. Shapiro's comments. He said that there probably isn't enough spectrum in the universe to accommodate this dream of transmitting everything to everyone individually.
And take a look at what these spectrum-enviers have in mind. The chief technology officer of Verizon said that sending all that video-on-demand stuff out over the cell network will probably clog it up royally. So, the answer is to transmit it, one-to-one, via separate RF signals. Sure looks to yours truly like this is a way to wrest RF spectrum from free over-the-air broadcasters and sell it to paid video services.
SPECTRUM USE
And Julius Genachowski, chairman of the FCC, is singing the same tune, saying that broadcasters are not putting the spectrum they occupy to its highest use. Earth to Julius… Get a clue! The FCC was created to serve the public convenience, interest, and necessity! Have you heard, J., that TV antenna sales are at an all-time high in the U.S.? Looks a lot like the public wants to watch free broadcast TV, otherwise why are they buying all those TV antennas? Doesn't that make broadcast television, ipso facto, the "highest use" of the spectrum it is occupying?
We don't yet know, of course, what will come of mobile DTV broadcasting. But many, if not most, DTV stations are filling up their respective 6 MHz blocks with subchannels. There is, for example, a DTV station in the Los Angeles area that carries no HDTV signal, but does carry 7 or 8 SD subchannels. Sandwich mobile into this, and TV broadcasters and the public are getting more and more out of a 6 MHz piece of spectrum.
We have already seen broadcasters get the short end of the stick as far as the spectrum allocations go. The original plan was to put all DTV stations on channels 14-62. They ended up on channels 2-52. That most certainly happened because broadband spectrum lusters realized that low VHF channels stink for digital transmission. Now, broadband spectrum lusters want the whole enchilada. In their perfect world, they would get all that spectrum to use for VOD, and they wouldn't have the broadcasters to compete with any more. But this couldn't happen, could it?
____________________________________________________________________
If you want a little common sense added to a topic, the Masked Engineer is the one for the job. He has also pegged the greedy bastards for what they are. The FCC has forgotten why it exists in the first place. They weren't created to do the lobbying for the broadband industry, but that is exactly what they are doing, and the American people need to RAISE HELL about this raping of a resource that belongs to us, not the FCC or the broadband industry.
OK BITCHER, I remember when you told me this was not true, so where are you now Mr.Know it all?
Industry analysts finally have the courage to call it what it really is, a scam !!
TVB | McAdams On: Spectrum Efficiency as a Hammer - Deborah D. McAdams
LOS ANGELES: The White House held a meeting on incentive auctions this week designed to motivate Congress to authorize them. Current law holds that the proceeds from spectrum license auctions go directly to the U.S. Treasury. The Obama Administration wants to split them with broadcasters who voluntarily relinquish spectrum for wireless broadband.
The Administration needs cooperation from a Congress somewhat preoccupied in a budget stalemate. The situation could work either way for broadcasters. The GOP may want to withhold authorization because the National Broadband Plan is one of President Obama’s pet projects. It may approve incentive auctions because doing so will make members appear nonpartisan for at least 10 minutes, and there’s no risk of public backlash over the issue. And that’s a shame, really.
The public seems woefully if not intentionally ill-informed about the National Broadband Plan. The wireless industry and its allies in consumer electronics have a lot of parrots in the media and the blogosphere happy to allegorize the spectrum reallocation as a patriotic duty. Much of what’s been repeated ad nauseam is about a “looming spectrum crisis” that only reassignment of the television bands can avert.
This is absolute, straightforward cow patties. A priori, any looming spectrum crisis brought about by addictive usage of smartphones can be mitigated to some degree with mathematics. In the din surrounding the National Broadband Plan, there’s nary a mention of increasing the efficiency of wireless devices, applications and networks.
“Applications that are designed specifically for bandwidth-constrained networks can consume significantly less data than those that are not.” That’s Rysavy Research. “Efficient browsers communicate only half the data of other mainstream mobile browsers.”
Wireless networks are becoming more efficient, though the Administration’s decree to free 500 MHz for broadband does not interpolate this. Forecasts for future usage--upon which rest the justification for reassigning broadcast spectrum--primarily rely on recent and current levels of data consumption and network efficiency based on 3G technology. Fourth-generation LTE networks are twice as spectrally efficient as 3G networks, Smart MCommerce says, and promise even greater efficiency going forward. There were zero LTE subscribers in 2009 and just 700,000 worldwide last year. iSuppli predicts the number will exceed 303 million in three years.
The president’s call for 500 MHz total, 24 percent of it from the broadcast band, is a target, not a mathematically demonstrable quantity. A more precisely extrapolated number is possible, but not politically desirable. The spectrum reassignment maneuver is about monopolization of video delivery. Once the wireless industry has wrested control of all broadcast spectrum (clearly the goal... remember, this is the second offensive), it will have to implement spectrum efficiencies because there’s only so much of it. I doubt the Pentagon’s going to fork over its airwaves so I can watch dancing cats on my phone while I’m waiting at Starbuck’s for just black coffee.
It’s either ironic or adept media manipulation that while the wireless industry gets a pass on spectral efficiency, the broadcast industry is getting pounded for not using spectrum efficiently. The argument here is that stations are not using their 6 MHz to its fullest capacity. This postulation seems about as demonstrable as needing 500 MHz for wireless broadband. There are something like 70 channels on the air here in Los Angeles, many of them targeting underserved communities. Those stations that aren’t multicasting are transmitting full high definition. Six are sending out Mobile DTV signals. This is not even two years after the DTV transition, up until which time broadcasters were transmitting dual analog and digital signals and racking up the requisite operating costs.
To infer that broadcasting is an inefficient use of the spectrum per se is simply disingenuous. The least the Administration could do is admit that by “inefficient” it’s referring to stock dividends. Otherwise, logic dictates that alternative means of deploying broadband across the country would be proffered. But they’re not, at least not by the Administration nor its foot soldiers at the Federal Communications Commission.
Wholesale reassignment of the TV bands is probably the most cumbersome, expensive, disruptive and time-consuming route to achieving nationwide wireless broadband. The technical requirements and end-user demands of Custer County, Nebraska and downtown Manhattan have approximately nothing in common. Custer County would be far better off working with local TV, radio and phone providers to launch a broadband network. Small and rural communities, the alleged beneficiaries of the FCC’s plan, could get municipal networks up and running far faster than waiting for the fed to hand spectrum to wireless companies that don’t invest in remote communities now because they don’t yield enough revenue.
Clusters of community networks rather than one big nationwide one might mean FCC chief Julius Genachowski has to occasionally change networks as he’s racing through Nebraska on I-80, at least with his current smartphone.
Try as I might, I cannot fathom this to be a tragedy of mythic proportion.
~ Deborah D. McAdams
________________________________________________________________________
Deborah D. McAdams has them nailed to the wall, but she is only repeating what I have been saying for almost 2 years, which that this is all about the money, and emergency communications, and those who cannot afford today's communications technology, can just fade away, because the money is more important than the real communications needs of those who cannot afford to pay for it !!
Typical politicians, and typical capitalist greed are on display here for all to see if you can see the forest for the trees. Just think, these same assholes are in control of trillions of our hard earned tax dollars, and they spend it like kids raiding the pinata. WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN !!
TVB | McAdams On: Spectrum Efficiency as a Hammer - Deborah D. McAdams
LOS ANGELES: The White House held a meeting on incentive auctions this week designed to motivate Congress to authorize them. Current law holds that the proceeds from spectrum license auctions go directly to the U.S. Treasury. The Obama Administration wants to split them with broadcasters who voluntarily relinquish spectrum for wireless broadband.
The Administration needs cooperation from a Congress somewhat preoccupied in a budget stalemate. The situation could work either way for broadcasters. The GOP may want to withhold authorization because the National Broadband Plan is one of President Obama’s pet projects. It may approve incentive auctions because doing so will make members appear nonpartisan for at least 10 minutes, and there’s no risk of public backlash over the issue. And that’s a shame, really.
The public seems woefully if not intentionally ill-informed about the National Broadband Plan. The wireless industry and its allies in consumer electronics have a lot of parrots in the media and the blogosphere happy to allegorize the spectrum reallocation as a patriotic duty. Much of what’s been repeated ad nauseam is about a “looming spectrum crisis” that only reassignment of the television bands can avert.
This is absolute, straightforward cow patties. A priori, any looming spectrum crisis brought about by addictive usage of smartphones can be mitigated to some degree with mathematics. In the din surrounding the National Broadband Plan, there’s nary a mention of increasing the efficiency of wireless devices, applications and networks.
“Applications that are designed specifically for bandwidth-constrained networks can consume significantly less data than those that are not.” That’s Rysavy Research. “Efficient browsers communicate only half the data of other mainstream mobile browsers.”
Wireless networks are becoming more efficient, though the Administration’s decree to free 500 MHz for broadband does not interpolate this. Forecasts for future usage--upon which rest the justification for reassigning broadcast spectrum--primarily rely on recent and current levels of data consumption and network efficiency based on 3G technology. Fourth-generation LTE networks are twice as spectrally efficient as 3G networks, Smart MCommerce says, and promise even greater efficiency going forward. There were zero LTE subscribers in 2009 and just 700,000 worldwide last year. iSuppli predicts the number will exceed 303 million in three years.
The president’s call for 500 MHz total, 24 percent of it from the broadcast band, is a target, not a mathematically demonstrable quantity. A more precisely extrapolated number is possible, but not politically desirable. The spectrum reassignment maneuver is about monopolization of video delivery. Once the wireless industry has wrested control of all broadcast spectrum (clearly the goal... remember, this is the second offensive), it will have to implement spectrum efficiencies because there’s only so much of it. I doubt the Pentagon’s going to fork over its airwaves so I can watch dancing cats on my phone while I’m waiting at Starbuck’s for just black coffee.
It’s either ironic or adept media manipulation that while the wireless industry gets a pass on spectral efficiency, the broadcast industry is getting pounded for not using spectrum efficiently. The argument here is that stations are not using their 6 MHz to its fullest capacity. This postulation seems about as demonstrable as needing 500 MHz for wireless broadband. There are something like 70 channels on the air here in Los Angeles, many of them targeting underserved communities. Those stations that aren’t multicasting are transmitting full high definition. Six are sending out Mobile DTV signals. This is not even two years after the DTV transition, up until which time broadcasters were transmitting dual analog and digital signals and racking up the requisite operating costs.
To infer that broadcasting is an inefficient use of the spectrum per se is simply disingenuous. The least the Administration could do is admit that by “inefficient” it’s referring to stock dividends. Otherwise, logic dictates that alternative means of deploying broadband across the country would be proffered. But they’re not, at least not by the Administration nor its foot soldiers at the Federal Communications Commission.
Wholesale reassignment of the TV bands is probably the most cumbersome, expensive, disruptive and time-consuming route to achieving nationwide wireless broadband. The technical requirements and end-user demands of Custer County, Nebraska and downtown Manhattan have approximately nothing in common. Custer County would be far better off working with local TV, radio and phone providers to launch a broadband network. Small and rural communities, the alleged beneficiaries of the FCC’s plan, could get municipal networks up and running far faster than waiting for the fed to hand spectrum to wireless companies that don’t invest in remote communities now because they don’t yield enough revenue.
Clusters of community networks rather than one big nationwide one might mean FCC chief Julius Genachowski has to occasionally change networks as he’s racing through Nebraska on I-80, at least with his current smartphone.
Try as I might, I cannot fathom this to be a tragedy of mythic proportion.
~ Deborah D. McAdams
________________________________________________________________________
Deborah D. McAdams has them nailed to the wall, but she is only repeating what I have been saying for almost 2 years, which that this is all about the money, and emergency communications, and those who cannot afford today's communications technology, can just fade away, because the money is more important than the real communications needs of those who cannot afford to pay for it !!
Typical politicians, and typical capitalist greed are on display here for all to see if you can see the forest for the trees. Just think, these same assholes are in control of trillions of our hard earned tax dollars, and they spend it like kids raiding the pinata. WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN !!
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Looks like no one reads this any more!! Am I wasting my time, and is free TV doomed? Looks like it to me !! Once they control the medium, they also control the message (LOOK AT PBS AS AN EXAMPLE), with corporate and Governmental influence over the message . It also looks like George Orwell was right, the "BIG BROTHER SYNDROME" really exists !!
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Deborah D. McAdams can see the truth, and is not afraid to call them out !!
2011 NAB: Broadcasters Press FCC's Lake for Incentive Auction Details - Deborah D. McAdams - TVTechnology
LAS VEGAS: Contention is the sole certainty surrounding the reassign broadcast spectrum for broadband. Regulators claim there’s a “looming spectrum crises.” Broadcast advocates beg to differ. The situation from there devolves. One broadcaster attending the spectrum panel discussion at 2011 NAB could not hold back during the Q&A session. Identifying himself as the chairman and CEO of Fox 23 in Portland, Maine, and WMEI in Puerto Rico, he called the spectrum reassignment a “cash grab.”
“I have never heard so much nonsense in my life,” he said. “I’m a minority broadcaster. I have had to work, I have had to sweat, I have had to bleed to get my six licenses. You’re talking about a cash grab. We can’t even get money from banks. We can’t do anything right now.”
Though the current FCC proposal calls for voluntary relinquishment, he was skeptical. Only the biggest wireless players, e.g., Verizon and AT&T, would have the money to participate in spectrum auctions, he reasoned. Cash-strapped broadcasters would be pushed into relinquishment by the capital markets.
“It would be the flow of the dough,” he said.
Bill Lake of the Federal Communications Commission was part of the panel. So was Alan Frank of Post-Newsweek Stations, who joked that had the government shut down, Lake would not have been able to attend.
“I’m wondering now if he doesn’t wish it would have shut down,” Frank said after Lake took a bit of a brickbatting over the FCC’s plan. The commission is pursuing a scheme to split auctions proceeds with broadcasters who hand over spectrum for broadband. The arrangement is part of the National Broadband Plan. Lake was the sole FCC official on the panel, which also included Mark Fratrik of BIA/Kelsey, John Hane of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP and Jane Mago of the National Association of Broadcasters.
The commission requires Congressional authorization to hold incentive auctions where incumbents receive a portion of proceeds. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski was at the White House last week calling for Congress to act. Frank, president and CEO of the six-station Post-Newsweek group, said there was insufficient information to pursue auction authority. Lake said the FCC intended to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on incentive auctions before any commenced. Frank then asked why authorization was necessary if there would be no auctions without an NPRM.
Hane, a communications attorney who specializes in spectrum issues, said it was still too early to tell if this Congress would provide authorization.
“Incentive auctions are a relatively new idea in Washington,” he said. “I think there is a meaningful constituency that has a philosophical issue with the incentive part. It’s uncertain, but it could happen. Broadcasters need to watch it very closely. It’s very much alive.”
Lake said incentive auctions may end up not looking so bad in hindsight.
“It’s easier to stop legislation than to push it through,” he said. “We are in a situation now where we are in a spectrum crunch, we’re not in a spectrum crisis, but there is a crunch. . . and there’s an opportunity for win-win with spectrum incentive auctions. Options in 10 years may be less attractive than they are today.”
Mago said the NAB doesn’t oppose incentive auctions per se, but rather the wholesale pursuit.
“Why do we have to keep moving forward as if there’s only one answer without knowing all the pieces?” she asked rhetorically. “That’s been the real question all along--what are all the pieces?”
Frank asked Lake what impact the AT&T-T-Mobile merger might have on the spectrum “crunch.” Lake reiterated projections in the National Broadband Plan of a 35x increase in data consumption between 2010 and 2015. Hane then went on a tear.
“Let’s be clear. There is no looming spectrum crisis,” he said. “The debate is not about whether we’re running out of spectrum. . . actually the demand was in 10 or 12 population centers. It’s not a looming nationwide spectrum crisis. It’s a potential shortage in 10 or 12 markets some time in the future. What we are debating is whether spectrum with excellent propagation properties should be assigned to broadband instead of broadcasters. What we’re talking about is giving better spectrum to the wireless industry to reduce their deployment costs. Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe it’s not, but it’s not about a spectrum crisis.”
Lake countered that a spectrum crisis in 20 or 30 large cities is a national problem.
“We don’t have to be right about our projections,” Lake said. “If there isn’t a demand for spectrum, then it won’t get sold.”
Hane said wireless companies would bid because of the propagation properties. Mago asked if broadcasters offering up spectrum would get to set their own reserve price. Lake said the incentive auctions would be structured in the aforementioned rulemaking, which likely would provide that a volunteering broadcaster would submit a reserve price.
“When we structure an auction, we might not set the minimum at the reserve. It might be more than that but it wouldn’t be less than that,” he said “My guess is, the soonest we could do this is 2015” if Congress provides authorization. The goal of the National Broadband Plan is to reassign 120 MHz of the broadcast spectrum for broadband, but Lake inferred that wasn’t a hard number.
“Some broadcasters believe we’re going after 120 MHz come hell or high water,” he said. “We’re going to structure an auction and get what we can get.”
Fratrik asked him what would happen if the commission ended up with a bunch of disparate spectrum after the auctions.
“We have thought about it,” Lake said. “It may be more expensive to get spectrum in some cities. The desirability to get spectrum nationwide may indicate a we’ll pay more. As desirable as contiguous blocks of spectrum are, it’s possible to auction off a block covering the Northeast region,” for example The FCC has auctioned regional licenses before, he said. “There may be companies that would bid on regional licenses that would not bid on a national license.”
At the end of the discussion, the devil remained in the details. The National Broadband Plan promised models that have not yet materialized. Lake said it was taking “longer than anyone hoped.”
“One issue is accommodating Canada and Mexico,” he said. “One model used distant measures around stations. They’re now using contours, which are more complex.” Lake said he hoped the models would become available within the next few months.
~ Deborah D. McAdams
__________________________________________________________________________
She sees the truth, why don't our Congressmen and Senators? Could they be on the take? YES THEY CAN AND ARE........Why do you think big business gets all of the breaks they do, and the burden is put on the little guy, while fat cat execs turn their nose down to the very ones providing the resources to make him rich, the common laborer !!
2011 NAB: Broadcasters Press FCC's Lake for Incentive Auction Details - Deborah D. McAdams - TVTechnology
LAS VEGAS: Contention is the sole certainty surrounding the reassign broadcast spectrum for broadband. Regulators claim there’s a “looming spectrum crises.” Broadcast advocates beg to differ. The situation from there devolves. One broadcaster attending the spectrum panel discussion at 2011 NAB could not hold back during the Q&A session. Identifying himself as the chairman and CEO of Fox 23 in Portland, Maine, and WMEI in Puerto Rico, he called the spectrum reassignment a “cash grab.”
“I have never heard so much nonsense in my life,” he said. “I’m a minority broadcaster. I have had to work, I have had to sweat, I have had to bleed to get my six licenses. You’re talking about a cash grab. We can’t even get money from banks. We can’t do anything right now.”
Though the current FCC proposal calls for voluntary relinquishment, he was skeptical. Only the biggest wireless players, e.g., Verizon and AT&T, would have the money to participate in spectrum auctions, he reasoned. Cash-strapped broadcasters would be pushed into relinquishment by the capital markets.
“It would be the flow of the dough,” he said.
Bill Lake of the Federal Communications Commission was part of the panel. So was Alan Frank of Post-Newsweek Stations, who joked that had the government shut down, Lake would not have been able to attend.
“I’m wondering now if he doesn’t wish it would have shut down,” Frank said after Lake took a bit of a brickbatting over the FCC’s plan. The commission is pursuing a scheme to split auctions proceeds with broadcasters who hand over spectrum for broadband. The arrangement is part of the National Broadband Plan. Lake was the sole FCC official on the panel, which also included Mark Fratrik of BIA/Kelsey, John Hane of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP and Jane Mago of the National Association of Broadcasters.
The commission requires Congressional authorization to hold incentive auctions where incumbents receive a portion of proceeds. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski was at the White House last week calling for Congress to act. Frank, president and CEO of the six-station Post-Newsweek group, said there was insufficient information to pursue auction authority. Lake said the FCC intended to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on incentive auctions before any commenced. Frank then asked why authorization was necessary if there would be no auctions without an NPRM.
Hane, a communications attorney who specializes in spectrum issues, said it was still too early to tell if this Congress would provide authorization.
“Incentive auctions are a relatively new idea in Washington,” he said. “I think there is a meaningful constituency that has a philosophical issue with the incentive part. It’s uncertain, but it could happen. Broadcasters need to watch it very closely. It’s very much alive.”
Lake said incentive auctions may end up not looking so bad in hindsight.
“It’s easier to stop legislation than to push it through,” he said. “We are in a situation now where we are in a spectrum crunch, we’re not in a spectrum crisis, but there is a crunch. . . and there’s an opportunity for win-win with spectrum incentive auctions. Options in 10 years may be less attractive than they are today.”
Mago said the NAB doesn’t oppose incentive auctions per se, but rather the wholesale pursuit.
“Why do we have to keep moving forward as if there’s only one answer without knowing all the pieces?” she asked rhetorically. “That’s been the real question all along--what are all the pieces?”
Frank asked Lake what impact the AT&T-T-Mobile merger might have on the spectrum “crunch.” Lake reiterated projections in the National Broadband Plan of a 35x increase in data consumption between 2010 and 2015. Hane then went on a tear.
“Let’s be clear. There is no looming spectrum crisis,” he said. “The debate is not about whether we’re running out of spectrum. . . actually the demand was in 10 or 12 population centers. It’s not a looming nationwide spectrum crisis. It’s a potential shortage in 10 or 12 markets some time in the future. What we are debating is whether spectrum with excellent propagation properties should be assigned to broadband instead of broadcasters. What we’re talking about is giving better spectrum to the wireless industry to reduce their deployment costs. Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe it’s not, but it’s not about a spectrum crisis.”
Lake countered that a spectrum crisis in 20 or 30 large cities is a national problem.
“We don’t have to be right about our projections,” Lake said. “If there isn’t a demand for spectrum, then it won’t get sold.”
Hane said wireless companies would bid because of the propagation properties. Mago asked if broadcasters offering up spectrum would get to set their own reserve price. Lake said the incentive auctions would be structured in the aforementioned rulemaking, which likely would provide that a volunteering broadcaster would submit a reserve price.
“When we structure an auction, we might not set the minimum at the reserve. It might be more than that but it wouldn’t be less than that,” he said “My guess is, the soonest we could do this is 2015” if Congress provides authorization. The goal of the National Broadband Plan is to reassign 120 MHz of the broadcast spectrum for broadband, but Lake inferred that wasn’t a hard number.
“Some broadcasters believe we’re going after 120 MHz come hell or high water,” he said. “We’re going to structure an auction and get what we can get.”
Fratrik asked him what would happen if the commission ended up with a bunch of disparate spectrum after the auctions.
“We have thought about it,” Lake said. “It may be more expensive to get spectrum in some cities. The desirability to get spectrum nationwide may indicate a we’ll pay more. As desirable as contiguous blocks of spectrum are, it’s possible to auction off a block covering the Northeast region,” for example The FCC has auctioned regional licenses before, he said. “There may be companies that would bid on regional licenses that would not bid on a national license.”
At the end of the discussion, the devil remained in the details. The National Broadband Plan promised models that have not yet materialized. Lake said it was taking “longer than anyone hoped.”
“One issue is accommodating Canada and Mexico,” he said. “One model used distant measures around stations. They’re now using contours, which are more complex.” Lake said he hoped the models would become available within the next few months.
~ Deborah D. McAdams
__________________________________________________________________________
She sees the truth, why don't our Congressmen and Senators? Could they be on the take? YES THEY CAN AND ARE........Why do you think big business gets all of the breaks they do, and the burden is put on the little guy, while fat cat execs turn their nose down to the very ones providing the resources to make him rich, the common laborer !!