FCC Wastes No Time on Television Spectrum Reallocation
The FCC has wasted no time on the television reallocation proposal outlined in its National Broadband Plan, scheduling the first of four working sessions on the issue for two weeks from now. The first session will be held at the FCC on Friday, June 25, 2010 from 3:00 to 6:00 PM. These working sessions are intended to address the technical challenges of the reallocation proposal. According to today's Advisory released by the FCC, the Commission has invited "a number of broadcast industry engineers and technical experts in related fields" to participate in the sessions. On the agenda for the June 25th meeting are such topics as: The Cellularization of Broadcast Architecture, Methodologies for Repacking the TV Band, Advancements in Compression Technology, and Improvements in VHF Reception. It's not clear who has been invited to attend or what the goal of the meeting is with just 30 minutes allocated to each of these four huge topics, but it is clear that the FCC is full speed ahead on its proposed reallocation of spectrum from the TV bands. See our earlier posting here discussing the spectrum reallocation plan and the potential impact on broadcasters. The meeting is open to the public and available online at http://reboot.fcc.gov/live/ for those interested in following the proceedings, which should be just about everyone in the television broadcast industry.
I see Genachowski is still spouting this nonsense about splitting channels. As I replied to the first post on this issue, it don't work this way.
If the Commission is so hot to save AT&T from the I-Phone, (don't believe this nonsense about bringing rural areas broadband--and follow the money), why are they accepting all these applications for digital translators?
Granted, most small market TV stations are running their transmitters to feed the cable head-ends. But if these stations were to give up their channel for a promise of shared auction revenues (and a hamburger on Tuesday), what happens to their must carry status? (Yea, I thought so).