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Re: So, the world didn't end said by tschmidt:said by RARPSL:The makers stopped making them and removed them from the distribution pipeline. Not sure about your locale but here in Southern NH there are pallets of converter boxes at BestBuy and Circuit City, even our local grocery store has them. /tom What you're seeing is what is left in the pipeline by distributors and retailers.
The actual manufacturing of boxes had halted in Asia in January because they had based their projections of supply needed on the original demand forecasts for 2/17.
Concern began to grow that demand rates were exceeding existing supply and especially concerning was what could happen if those who had been wait listed for coupons since December were suddenly issued them through additional funding.
Michael Petricone, Sr. VP, for the Consumer Electronics Association, brought forward the issue at the 2/5 hearings and stated, "there were between 3 million and 6 million boxes currently in the pipeline. Assuming the worst case, he said, of only 3 million boxes in inventory, if daily coupon redemptions continue at about 115,000 per day, "retailers would run out of boxes by the end of February."
"An unknown that makes any projections difficult is that, given the NTIA coupon wait list of 3.7 million requests, if NTIA were to suddenly issue all the coupons and 65% or so were redeemed, boxes would run out even earlier."
The manufactures have now restarted assembly based on new demand numbers, but the new boxes are not expected to be available until April.
Petricone was recommending to the FCC that they consider slowing the demand to accommodate this gap by extending the deadline and if re-funded, slowing the coupon distribution.
“CEA believes that the extension of the transition date to June 12 could reduce daily coupon redemption rates in the coming weeks" and CEA was also recommending (among other things), "Restricting the availability of vouchers to exclusively OTA households."
Presentation here:
»www.fcc.gov/realaudio/presentati···ment.pdf
My favorite quote was by FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell that the government had accommodated a possible shortfall in converters, saying that while there may not be an boxes on the shelves, that's OK, because there wasn't going to be enough coupons either. | | |
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| Woops, Correction to above:
"My favorite quote was by FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell that the government had accommodated a possible shortfall in converters, saying that while there may not be enough boxes on the shelves, that's OK, because there wasn't going to be enough coupons either." | |
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