FCC backs off talk of forcefully reclaiming spectrum from TV broadcasters
By Chris Ziegler 
posted January 13th 2010 1:50PM
posted January 13th 2010 1:50PM
Rest easy, broadcasters: your hard-earned spectrum is safe, at least for the moment. The FCC's full-court press to round up additional spectrum for wireless broadband services had led it to suggest reclaiming some spectrum from broadcasters in recent months -- a move that would arguably make sense considering the ever-shrinking importance of over-the-air television and the availability of more efficient broadcast methods -- but was met with considerable resistance from the broadcast industry, ultimately leading it to back off the message this week. The Fed's director of scenario planning for its broadband task force has gone on record saying the commission had never seriously considered implementing such a plan, instead looking at "a scenario that establishes a voluntary marketplace mechanism so that broadcast TV stations have a choice in how they want to use their spectrum." In other words, sell it if you want, keep it if you want -- and in all likelihood, the FCC would be looking to repurpose any offloaded frequencies for broadband. Of course, this kind of plan could leave the country with a fragmented system of spectrum slots where individual stations have elected to sell part or all of their airwaves, not really an optimal solution when some estimates have us needing to clear several hundred additional megahertz to keep up with data demand over the next few years -- but it's a start.
One instance where it sounds logical to "seize" the unused spectrum for a better purpose but they instead leave it. I feel like there was some pocket padding here. And as usual we will suffer for it.
Eminent domain on seems to be used when it screws over the little guys.
@bullshitexpresscom
The broadcasters don't "own" the spectrum.
Anyway, they should have to pay for it if they want it, especially if they're going to charge cable cos. fees to rebroadcast it.
@Le Big Mac They do pay for it...that's what licensing fees are.
@NikAmi Actually broadcast stations don't pay any significant fees to license the spectrum-- only small filing fees and so forth. They get to use the public airwaves in exchange for providing important public services.
Broadcasters just spent hundreds of millions upgrading their infrastructure to broadcast ATSC because of a government mandate, and the promised new revenue streams due to additional subchannels have yet to materialize. The local television business has never been so rough and should stations start going dark and/or consolidating into conglomerates the American people will be worse off for it IMHO.
we should get broadcast TV via municipal WiFi
@JeremyBenthem yeah i agree, i really wish there was wifi everywhere. i live in nyc and theres wifi alot of places due to the cable company but you have to be a subscriber to use it :(
Hey where in NYC and what cable company? I'm with time warner, I haven't seen wifi from them
@wupolo
I'm late to the party. I know Optimum/Cablevision offers it if you're in the Bronx. Don't know about the other boroughs and what the other companies are doing.
Let's just go for what is good.. :)
For sure they know what they are doing.
Yeah, there's no bias in that writeup...
There are plenty of people who use OTA TV (myself included), it is perfect now that it is all digital and in HD. The cable companies are losing customers to it since they save hundreds of dollars a year switching to OTA with no picture quality loss. And the 18-30 year olds that use mobile smartphones and pad the pockets of the telecom industry are probably the same numbers as the number of people watching OTA TV.
Now, if they were going to setup free public internet access (slower speed) for everyone using a few megahertz of OTA TV spectrum (that was the same range nationwide), then I might change my mind.
@rcappo No picture quality LOSS? I've never seen anything on cable that even comes REMOTELY close to the quality of OTA HD...
@TVGenius Definitely. OTA broadcasts look absolutely fantastic. I have HD satellite, but I use my ATSC tuners for recording whenever possible because it just looks better.
@rcappo
Agree. I pretty much gave the finger to dish network and switched to OTA. Cable is similar to OTA, 95% if the time there is nothing worth watching. I've found shows like Invader Zim, Hey! Arnold, and Myth Busters via torrents so I'm good. Demonoid FTW.
The whole fragmented spectrum thing sounds to be counter productive and not in the public interest.
They should reclaim all the spectrum licenses for analog broadcast slots as well as "white space" and any other reserved spectrum that is not actually being utilized or being utilized but by legacy equipment. And by this I mean anything that is not current technology gets reclaimed, such as forcing a move of all the cordless phones to the DECT digital spectrum just like they did with TV.
Then hold another spectrum auction selling country wide licenses only, with the proceeds divided equally among all the current holders, regaurdless of location.
FCC, Back Down.
The OTA TV broadcast that you watch is not in any of the spectrum being talked about, it is the older now unused analog broadcast slots. The broadcast industry was given a set range of spectrum in which to broadcast digital OTA TV which to my understanding is not the same as was used for the majority of the old analog transmissions.
@dennisheadley
The deal for DTV broadcasts was that they got new spectrum and had to "return" the analog TV spectrum once the changeover occured (which it finally did). That spectrum has been auctioned or will be.
This is the current DTV broadcast spectrum.
Seems to me like they should lease the airwaves, rather than selling them outright. Data space is going to get tight.
Haha, the FCC could declare eminent domain over the spectrum in question. Now that'd be something. Oh, and once this freed-up spectrum is used and demand keeps going up, what then? We'll find a solution somehow I guess. Humanity always seems to.
@balwheeler
I agree. I have no problem with the FCC regulating things, but this action seems unnecessary to me. We will inevitably run out of available spectrum and then we will have to rely on technological advances and efficiency to increase speeds and capacity. Why not leave the OTA spectrum alone and start relying on technological advances now.
I don't have cable tv and I do most of my tv watching over playon/hulu/netflix, but once and a while I'll switch on the converter and watch me some OTA DTV. The selection is a lot crappier, but at least it's something, and it's free.
Hands off that OTA band. Its all we've got in the 30% of the continental US that's not served by cable. The digital divide is bad enough - let's not make it worse, eh?
In how many areas are all available OTA channels actually used? I honestly don't have any idea. While I certainly want to see free OTA digital TV continue, I really wonder if we can get rid of some of the channels. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there are 68 ATSC channels. There are only 7 major broadcast networks: PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CW, and ION. Even if a market has 8 more public access or Spanish-language channels, that still means we only need 15 channels in a broadcast area. I know broadcast areas overlap, but I would think you'd be able to set things up so (for the most part) only 3 markets would overlap a bit. If that's true, then you'd only need 45 channels.
If 4 broadcast areas overlap, then you could recover almost the same amount of spectrum space if you cut things down to ~12 channels per market.
Yes, doing this would probably cut back on some OTA TV. I haven't checked lately, but I used to get some pretty weird OTA TV years ago. I definitely think some of that spectrum space would have been better allocated to wireless Internet.
Even if you can't get rid of ~20 ATSC channels everywhere, maybe it would make sense to some of them outside of major cities. I might be wrong here, but it seems like that would still be useful. In lower-density areas it seems like it would make sense to deploy cell towers with a large footprint and a large capacity. You'd need extra spectrum space to get that large capacity. In urban areas you can just build lots of towers each with a small footprint and a relatively small capacity.
Lack of spectrum isn't really a problem .. the lack of fiber optic cables meshing the country is a problem (and yes i know there is dark fiber). Because if that issue were non existence we could have WiFi covering the whole nation. Fiber optic lines oughta be as common and in parallel to electricity wires. The existing fiber isn't getting used because of the lack of people having broadband and shitty content availability. The real solution is WiFi hotpots every few hundred feet with availability as common as cell phone coverage. Wireless broadband companies can pay homeowners to operate WiFi stations that are hooked up to fiber (cell phone companies already pay people rent to put towers or equipment on property). They could pay them by offering them free broadband and cell phone service. No new spectrum grants needed, and in combination with LTE you can have the whole nation well covered with wireless broadband. There really isn't a spectrum issue so much as a broadband landline coverage issue.