  Killa200Premium
join:2005-12-02
Southeast TN | As usual, much fail So they want us to pay between $1.37 billion and $1.83 billion to upgrade / change the OTA network.... so broadcasters can give up up 100MHz-180MHz to the FCC, who can sell that spectrum for $60 billion and then share on those proceeds with the broadcasters...
Shouldn't they be sharing those proceeds with us since we essentially used our tax money to BUY that spectrum in the manner of upgrading their entire broadcast network so we could do this auction? | |
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 | | | Re: As usual, much fail I think you have to look at the net effect which will be income for the government. They should use this income to reduce our taxes or reduce the deficit but they won't. But that is a different problem. | |
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| |  56403739Less than 5 months leftPremium
join:2006-03-08
Naples, FL
kudos:2 | Re: As usual, much fail Since the 1980's broadcast TV has "given up" almost 200 MHz of spectrum which has been misused, mismanaged and misappropriated by the CTIA membership and it's lobbyists. There is no reason to expect anything different should another 180 MHz suddenly become available.
The one thing OTA TV does that the wireless carriers would never do is operate in the public interest. When monster snowstorms hit where does the public turn for information? Verizon? AT&T? Comcast? You might say that TV stations never paid for the spectrum, which is true if you apply post-1991 Congressional logic to it, but they pay regulatory fees every year and have been subject to programming requirements that the wireless carrier CEOs would choke their grandmas to avoid.
The ATSC OTA TV dust is still settling and these greedy f*cks masquerading as wireless Internet saviours are already trying to scoop up more spectrum to waste. The money involved here is an order of magnitude larger than $60 billion. AT&T et. al. want nothing less than total control of the Internet. | |
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|  Romney2012Defeat Obama 2012-Chg we can believe inPremium
join:2002-03-03
USA
kudos:4 | The FCC is afraid of picking a fight with the broadcasters. It goes back to that old saying: "Never argue with a man who buys his ink by the barrel ". Meaning that you don't get in a fight with reporters; newspapers; TV Stations & Networks; and their owners because they can smear you daily in the news and make you look very bad. The FCC commissioners are politicians and they all learned long ago who not to get angry with them. | |
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|  tiger72SexaT duorPPremium
join:2001-03-28
Saint Louis, MO
kudos:1
 ·T-Mobile US
1 edit | said by Killa200:So they want us to pay between $1.37 billion and $1.83 billion to upgrade / change the OTA network.... so broadcasters can give up up 100MHz-180MHz to the FCC, who can sell that spectrum for $60 billion and then share on those proceeds with the broadcasters... The broadcasters would get that money because they were forced to buy $millions in digital equipment for local OTA transmission. The broadcasters should be compensated for their investment if they're going to have to spend more money to transition to low power towers.
That said, those broadcasters never bought that spectrum. They don't own it, so it's the government's to do with as they please.
Shouldn't they be sharing those proceeds with us since we essentially used our tax money to BUY that spectrum in the manner of upgrading their entire broadcast network so we could do this auction?
I think the news post is a bit disingenuous. The broadcasters wouldn't reap any profits of the auction - they'd simply get paid enough to cover their conversion to low power OTA. The rest would go to the taxpayers.
The "paying $1.37bil to $1.83bil" and "sharing proceeds from the auction" are essentially one in the same.
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"What makes us omniscient? Have we a record of omniscience? ...If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we'd better reexamine our reasoning."
-United States Secretary of Defense (1961-1968) Robert S. McNamara | |
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| | Reviews:
 ·magicjack.com
| Re: As usual, much fail said by tiger72:The broadcasters would get that money because they were forced to buy $millions in digital equipment for local OTA transmission. I think that's offset by the taxpayer spending $millions on converter boxes to keep the broadcaster's viewing audience intact.
To me, the real issue is that there is unused spectrum. If broadcasters purchased this spectrum today (for digital broadcast) they would get less because it takes less to do what they buy spectrum to do.
IMO, auctioning the spectrum would be better than unregulated "white space" usage.
I don't think I'd give the money to broadcasters. Nothing's being taken from them. They can broadcast the same thing today they could when they were analog.
The best defense for broadcasters would be to begin broadcasting more channels. I don't believe they can just sit on unused spectrum because they own it. I'd rather see that happen.
Mark | |
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| | | 56403739Less than 5 months leftPremium
join:2006-03-08
Naples, FL
kudos:2 | Re: As usual, much fail One TV channel is 6 MHz, and the entire digital TV signal fits inside it. The ATSC system is so compact that stations can operate on first adjacent channels without interference and deliver 19 megabits/second of robust digital data to potentially millions of television receivers inside their coverage area. That is some very efficient information distribution. These channels can be re-used every couple hundred miles and most broadcasters are already transmitting multiple digital video channels inside that single RF channel data stream. There is no "unused spectrum".
But to take this to it's logical conclusion, if 180 MHz is worth $60 billion at auction for a nationwide license, then each of these 6 MHz channels is worth $333 million. Since they can be re-used at about a 200 mile spacing we'll assume that each can support at least 50 stations. That means each DTV station allotment is worth a little less than $7 million at auction.
If it would get the CTIA spectrum pirates off their backs for good, I think every TV station would gladly pay that one-time license fee and shut these stupid "they never paid for the frequency" arguments down permanently. | |
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| | plutocracy IN da usa now take that Bryan Adams song and change the words.
hey all they need now is to add a big army and start invading other countries...who does that sound like form history.... | |
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| tiger72SexaT duorPPremium
join:2001-03-28
Saint Louis, MO
kudos:1 | Re: plutocracy IN da usa huh? | |
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 n2jtx
join:2001-01-13
Glen Head, NY
 ·Optimum Online
| Speechless There are times when I read a story here, such as this one, and my head just starts throbbing with disbelief. Of course this would play into the hands of Comcast who I am sure would be more than willing to dump NBC's OTA spectrum and make it a subscription only service (AND get paid by the government to do it).
TV has already given up huge chunks of spectrum over the years. TV used to cover channels 2 through 83. Then channels 70 through 83 were grabbed for cellular service. In the meantime, channels 14 through 17 have been used for public service as the UHF "T" band and in some cases going up the channel 19 with trunked radio systems at 502MHz service. Now with the DTV conversion, OTA TV has lost channels 52 through 69. Channels 2 through 6 are also mostly dark now and will probably go to some other service. A few more reductions and we may wind up with a grand total of 5 OTA TV channels centered somewhere around RF channel 33 (channel 37 excluded of course).
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I support the right to keep and arm bears. | |
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|  GuspazGuspazPremium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
kudos:16 | Re: Speechless Broadcast television is a colossal waste of spectrum. Why should huge swathes of spectrum be dedicated to OTA when it can be used to deliver higher quality video in less bandwidth?
Unless I'm mistaken, OTA DTV is still MPEG-2. h.264 requires less than half the bandwidth to achieve similar quality to MPEG-2. Packet-based multicast means that you can save bandwidth in cells where a given channel is not being watched.
Spectrum is a precious, finite resource. One day, in the not-so-distant future, we're going to get too close to the shannon limit, and we won't be able get any more bandwidth out of the wireless spectrum. But at this point, we're throwing it away uselessly when the technology exists to deliver the same content (a video feed of a given level of quality) while using far less of the spectrum.
Personally, I hope that one day, OTA TV has *all* spectrum taken away. Television broadcasts should go over data networks, not wastefully consuming enormous chunks of spectrum even when nobody is watching in a given area. | |
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| | | | Re: Speechless If you're looking strictly at content delivery, OTA is very efficient. How many interweb pipes would it take to send full 18 Mbit/sec HD programming to 100,000+ people simultaneously without crashing due to too many server requests?
Geez, streaming video providers were brought to their knees in epic failure when Steve Jobs announced the iPad. 
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"It's all coming down!!" - Mike Holmes | |
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 joebarnhartPaxio evangelist
join:2005-12-15
Santa Clara, CA | Say goodbye to over-the-air TV If, like me, you get your OTA TV signals from 40 miles away, you can say goodbye to "free" TV forever. Switching to a "network of low power transmitters" means capital cost to the station -- cost they cannot possibly fund to achieve the same broadcast radius they now have with high-powered towers at high altitudes. The broadcasters on Sutro Tower in the S.F. Bay Area would need to add thousands of "low power transmitters" to cover the same area. Not gonna happen. | |
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 DaveDudeNo Fear
join:1999-09-01
New Jersey
kudos:1 | Ridiculus Instead of encouraging ota, alternatives to cable. They are doing all they can to prevent progress. With digital televison its possble to get at least 30-40 stations ota. Why would the fcc rollover so easily for cable ? ugh | |
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Reviews:
 ·Verizon FiOS
| the "public" no longer owns anything but debt it used to be the citizens of the U.S. jointed "owned" all sorts of things and they were to used for the benefit of the citizens.
the only thing we own now is debt - corporations effectively "own" everything else.
corporations can get anything they want to do with as they please simply by firing up the lawyers, the lobbyists or both.
bank that needs rescuing? bailout!
industry with dying business model (RIAA, MPAA)? lawyers and legislation!
broadcasters that might lose spectrum? Lobby!
we aren't citizens anymore, we're "revenue producing units". | |
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|  DataDocMy avatar looks like me, if I was 2D.Premium
join:2000-05-14
Greenville, NC | Re: the "public" no longer owns anything but debt Someone "didn't explain it well enough" to you if you are still complaining. | |
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Mark HPremium
join:2008-05-18
Sterling Heights, MI | Taxing the air. Auctions are just a cost to be passed on to consumers. | |
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