[opendtv] Broadcasters Ready to Fight
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2010 12:44:20 -0600
I wonder. A few years ago, when the know-it-alls were hyping up UWB, they
claimed that there wasn't anything like a spectrum shortage. UWB would solve
everything. At that time, the goal was to show how DTV was poorly conceived.
Is it the same know-it-alls who now claim there is an urgent spectrum shortage
to resolve?
I smell hype, as I did then.
Bert
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http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/92540
Broadcasters Ready to Fight
by Gary Arlen, 01.05.2010
WASHINGTON
"It's clear that they're gunning to shut down broadcasting," said Mark Aitken
of Sinclair Broadcasting, the day after Federal Communications Commission
Chairman Julius Genachowski appointed a special advisor to evaluate how
broadcast TV spectrum should be reallocated.
Aitken, director of advanced technology for Sinclair urges the industry to
"approach this problem with an 'outside-the-Beltway' mentality." Aitken cites
the modulation battle of the 1990s and predicts, "We can beat this thing,"
through a coordinated response to the FCC's blitz assault on the airwaves.
Perry Sook, chairman/president/CEO of Nexstar Broadcasting Group, is even more
adamant about the so-called "spectrum grab."
Citing the "unfunded Federal mandate" under which broadcasters spent $15
billion for the digital TV transition, Sook rattles off a roster of reasons why
the FCC's dream for redistributing TV spectrum makes no sense.
"Downconverting our spectrum to allow only a single standard definition channel
would constitute one of the largest bait and switch schemes on consumers in the
history of our country!" Sook said, inserting his own exclamation mark.
He also challenges the "philosophical argument," wondering why the "iPhone is
entitled to more spectrum than local broadcasters."
"I don't know that there is a public interest mandate for Apple," he said.
"Compare that to the public service and educational requirements placed on
broadcasters for our use of the spectrum."
Sook suggests that the FCC has overstepped its bounds.
"Congress allocated the spectrum to broadcasters and even imposed a 5 percent
tax levy on revenues derived from ancillary uses," he said. "The process is
working exactly as Congress has intended and... the FCC has no authority to
suggest, much less attempt to orchestrate, a potential reclamation of broadcast
spectrum."
LIGHTING THE FUSE
Aitken and Sook are on the front lines in the expanding Washington debate about
how to use the airwaves in today's demanding wireless world. A rapid series of
events has escalated the battle and promises to extend the skirmishes beyond
the pending FCC rulemaking into a drawn-out Congressional and eventual court
confrontation.
The spectrum allocation tinderbox was lit by a Consumer Electronics
Association-funded study, released in late October, which suggested that $1
trillion of broadband services could be generated from the 300 MHz of spectrum
used by TV broadcasters. The CEA study suggested that the broadcast bandwidth
is now worth about $62 billion, and it included a proposal for carving out
swaths of TV spectrum for other uses: mostly ones for wireless/mobile broadband
applications.
Shortly afterwards, CEA and CTIA: The Wireless Association (formerly known as
the Cellular Telephone Association) asked the FCC to examine reallocation of
broadcast spectrum to prepare for the "looming spectrum crisis." They cited
Congress's directive that the FCC must conduct an inventory of all available
spectrum with recommendations for greater efficiency.
The FCC, which is in the midst of developing its National Broadband Plan-due in
mid-February-jumped into the fray when the FCC's "Broadband Czar" Blair Levin,
in a speech about a month later, supported the TV spectrum reallocation concept.
In early December, the commission issued an urgent request for additional data
from broadcasters, citing a "concern that the United States will not have
spectrum sufficient to meet the demand for wireless broadband services in the
near future."
The wording of the FCC "data request" triggered even greater fears, exacerbated
by the FCC's unusually short three-week turnaround period. In its official
notice, the commission explained that its "inquiry takes into account the value
that the United States puts on free, over-the-air television, while also
exploring market-based mechanisms for television broadcasters to contribute to
the broadband effort any spectrum in excess of that which they need to meet
their public interest obligations and remain financially viable."
For many broadcasters, that sounded like a threat to reduce TV bandwidth to
standard-definition capacity and eliminate ancillary channel bandwidth.
Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, a couple of bills emerged, adding to the threats to
the industry. The Spectrum Relocation Improvement Act of 2009 (H.R. 3019) and
the Radio Spectrum Inventory Act (H.R. 3125) bubbled up in summer and autumn
and were greeted as "incentives for efficient spectrum utilization" in the
words of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). At Telecommunications Subcommittee
hearings in December, Waxman, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce
Committee, described the bills as means to "enhance our ability to develop
forward-looking spectrum policies" and the start of a process "to examine
whether there is under-utilized spectrum."
EXPANDING THE BATTLE
As the debate escalates, technology companies and their advocates are building
support for their viewpoint that Americans-including military and public
agencies such as first responders-will need evermore wireless capacity to
conduct their work. Broadcasters are marshalling their forces to take on the
assault.
"We are taking this threat to free over-the-air television very seriously,"
said David Donovan, president of the Association for Maximum Service Television
(MSTV). He says that his members are "somewhat stunned" by the effort to grab
broadcasters' airwaves.
"The Obama administration made a commitment to over-the-air digital television
earlier this year when it delayed the DTV transition in order to help consumers
maintain access to DTV," Donovan said. "FCC officials, along with just about
every member of Congress, told the American Consumer that, if they bought a
digital television or invested in a DTV converter box, they would be able to
receive for free additional multiple program channels and/or HDTV programs."
Donovan contends that the "broadband task force [is] now reneging on this
promise" less than six months later, adding that if the FCC's visions are
realized, "The digital divide between rich and poor will become a canyon.
"It is entirely possible that high-definition TV will become the exclusive
province of premium tier pay services," Donovan continued. "Mobile broadcasting
and additional digital channels may never be realized."
Even as the FCC began poring over the public and industry comments about its
spectrum reallocation examination, expert viewpoints popped up. Thomas Hazlett,
a former FCC chief economist in the early 1990s and a self-described "free
marketer," posited that the FCC should require local broadcasters to pool their
airwaves to create seven overlay licenses of 42 MHz each; then the FCC would
auction off all seven licenses.
Under the Hazlett plan-and similar cash-for-spectrum proposals-broadcast
licensees would take the funds and the government would find other customers
for the bandwidth. Some of the revenue generated from the auctions would be
used to supply limited cable or satellite connections to the homes (Hazlett
estimates 10 million) that do not currently use such multichannel access.
Hazlett estimates that the 10-year cost for such connections would be $3
billion (10 million households at $300 each), just a fraction of the spectrum
auction receipts.
"The whole point," Hazlett told TV Technology "is to get the spectrum in the
next three to four years" or the value "would be lost."
SPECTRUM DEMAND 'FREIGHT TRAIN'
Tom Wheeler, a former president of CTIA, and before that, president of the
National Cable & Telecommunications Association and now a technology venture
capitalist, warns that the spectrum policy discourse "seems to sidestep the
potential for... a data brownout calamity." He cites the predicted 50 to
100-fold increase in the computing power of microchips as a reason for
increased wireless spectrum capacity.
"The spectrum demand freight train is moving faster than the ability to provide
for its rights-of-way," he said. "The consequences of such an imbalance are not
good for the nation."
For his part, the FCC's Levin says, "the biggest challenge is actually causing
an action to occur before the problem is actually manifest in the world." In
response to TV Technology queries, Levin compared the spectrum planning process
to "getting folks to focus on the levees in New Orleans before Katrina, or the
problems Richard Clarke had getting folks to focus before 9/11."
At the December House hearings, Gordon Smith, the new president/CEO of NAB,
emphasized that "broadcasting and broadband are not 'either/or' propositions as
some have suggested." Smith also cited the DTV transition and the emergence of
mobile DTV.
"A comprehensive, objective examination of spectrum allocation and usage is a
worthwhile endeavor," he told Congress. "Such an analysis-if done forthrightly
and without bias-will demonstrate that broadcasters continue to be effective
custodians of our nation's airwaves. Many broadcast services have not been, and
cannot be, efficiently replicated by broadband services."
Aitken sees the current spectrum reallocation debate as an offshoot of the
white spaces issue, during which Silicon Valley and its technology allies began
eyeing the broadcast bandwidth as prime wireless real estate. He thinks it was
a way for technology companies to determine if "they were dealing with a
chihuahua or a rottweiler" in taking on the broadcast industry.
"Not all spectrum is created equal," Aitken said. If technology "spectrum
squatters," as he calls the upstart users, "think that spectrum is better than
glass fiber, then they don't know engineering." Aitken expects that the next
battles will focus on the ways in which the government can squeeze efficiencies
out of the spectrum to satisfy private investment.
MSTV's Donovan offers a blunt reminder that the debate is just beginning.
"The recommendations of the [FCC broadband] Task Force is the first step in a
long process," he said. "Nonetheless, it is important because it may frame the
debate. At this point, it is far from clear whether the commissioners support
any idea."
Noting that the FCC's current review "seems to turn the spectrum inventory
process on its head," Donovan adds that the current evaluation needs a full
technical inventory to determine if "wireless companies are actually using
their current allotments."
"If the government is going to reclaim from anyone, it should conduct such an
inventory and not rely on paper estimates that a particular service needs more
spectrum."
That is likely not to be the last word on this proposal.
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