AVS Official Topic - The FCC & Broadcast Spectrum - Page 76

With the eventual result being that the public would now be paying for a service that formerly was free (by way of ads and commercials) so Verizon (and others) can make more money...

Where's the Smilie for "Two Thumbs Up"?

I don't have a TV station. My bosses have a TV station.
They don't listen to anything I say about this matter.

"If the Federal Communications Commission sides with the Global Positioning System (GPS) industry and prevents wireless start-up LightSquared from deploying its land-based broadband network, it would decrease the value of all wireless spectrum, according to a study released Tuesday."

http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-va...f-all-spectrum

This reminds me of the discussions I had with the FCC a few decades ago, concerning interference, when I put together a seminar.

The "problem", as the FCC indicated, was that manufacturers of consumer-level devices (of any kind) were reluctant to include ANY means that would make them less likely to
interfere (or, be interfered with), because it would raise the price. They said that a one-cent increase in manufacturing costs of a particular product would mean a decrease in their profit margin of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Now. LightSquared wants to completely blame the GPS manufacturers for the fact that a "popularly-priced" consumer device can't handle interference from an adjacent channel, when that interference (now ground-based, as opposed to satellite) is thousands of times as strong as it was supposed to be. And, they try to say that it will ruin any chances of spectrum having value in the future.

Maybe that's why we have regulations and standards in the first place.

Oddly enough, the broadcasters complaining (or who should be complaining) about losing the spectrum are also using it for profit.

Ah, however, they are providing a service to their clients and passing those messages and programming on to the masses for free. Big difference.

Not one single person in this country, nor in many others for that matter, need to pay a fee to partake of the programming be it radio or television. If it can be recieved, it can be watched or listened to. It covers hundreds of millions of people. It is out there for anyone and everyone...

...and its been serving the public for 70 years.

Ah, but the times they are a changin'.

Under the current politcal climate in the US, the wireless companies are "job creators" who would benefit from the elimination of "draconian" regulations imposed by a "broken" federal government that has "run amok". Since the radio spectrum is an "exploitable resource" like oil or coal, it's use should be entrusted to private sector "experts" who know how to "add value" to it. Current use of the spectrum under the one-to-many model is "socialism" and "big-government overreach", because the US Constitution did not specify exactly how it should be used, and did not give Washington the power to regulate it.

I certainly don't agree with what I just said, but that's the way it is.

And how do we get the message across that it ain't broke and don't need fixin'???

Where is Mr. Smith? We need him in Washington...

I hope the stations in the DC area broke into programming and did earthquake coverage to demonstrate to the FCC that one to many in an emergency does work. If they didn't they are going to be used as an example by the FCC of their position.

How those stations operate and what they program is what the FCC ASSUMES all stations do when that is not the case.

Can't speak for DC, but WDBJ-7 Roanoke broke in with local coverage, went to CBS's network coverage, then came back for more local coverage.

- Trip

All it's ultimately about is eradicating the middle class in this country.

So either be prepared to join the "Elite", or become a powerless peon.

I do believe there is more truth than fiction in that statement...

What the heck is going on around here. If OTA wasn't important they wouldn't have just spent millions of dollars on the DTV transition.


I'll stay a powerless peon and make the other morons take blame for the 14.3 trillion dollar deficit and the poor shape of this country.

"They" (the wireless providers) didn't spend millions of dollars on the DTV transition. Each television station group or individual station owner spent those millions of dollars. And it was important enough that this latest proposed debacle will require a third of those stations to do it again IF they can find the room to "repackage" themselves if they are lucky. The unlucky ones will be forced off the air eliminating thusands of quality jobs and service to the public all so some slackers can have high speed internet to play video games with each other...

And it was funny (in a sad way) to see pictures of all those people outside their buildings staring at their cell phones, wondering why they didn't work...

The cell phone spectrum was useless when their PAYING customers needed it. It would be a poor agrument to suggest that more spectrum would help. My suspicion is that they would never have enough spectrum.

Listening to the radio (a functioning one-to-many broadcast system) I noticed that many of the reporters had to seek out land-line phones to file their reports. Even they noticed that the cell phone network was useless. Note that the internet still seemed to work, and even those land-line phones may have actually been VOIP servives, not POTS lines.

I wonder how efficient it was to have social media bandwidth chewed up by millions of tweets claiming/asking "Earthquake?!?!?!?!" followed by usesless calls asking "Did you feel what I felt?"

Every since I have read the page below I have felt good about what you said not happening.


http://www.rbr.com/media-news/dingel...d-secrecy.html

The BBC website said it best, when they linked from their line about people "turning to Social media sites" in the aftermath, by showing a 9-11-style photo of an overturned patio chair, with the words "8-23-2011: Never Forget".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14653100

http://i.imgur.com/7kDXs.jpg


It's the BS'ing around that will always take up all of the available bandwidth.

For free? The stations are charging their clients. Even the "non-commercial" stations don't mention clients unless there is a "donation". Television is making its money by reselling the airwaves - just like a wireless provider resells the airwaves to their clients.

We see the "free" internet over paid wireless instead of the paid television content over "free" television. We may also see paid internet over paid wireless and paid television content over paid distributions such as cable and satellite ... but there is no "free-free". Someone is paying.


Yep. Obviously more bandwidth needs to be taken from television stations to keep the wireless devices working.

Even if they could have it all.

Wireless companies do need to manage it better so 911 calls make it through. That will get the regulators off their backs some for the "failures" during this week's major events.

To be fair, earthquakes in the east are different than earthquakes in the west.

The last 4.6 in California was reported felt by 2865 people, 18 were more than 200km away and only 2 were more than 500km away. Yet the 5.8 in Virginia was reported felt by 132927 people as far away as Colorado. There was more damage than just a lawn chair tipped over. Fortunately there was not more damage.

NEW YORK (AP) - Wireless networks fell quiet Sunday in some coastal areas of North Carolina and southern Virginia, but calls were going through in most areas affected by Tropical Storm Irene, the Federal Communications Commission said.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=153&sid=17007090

Their point was, that there were plenty of frivolous uses for that "limited" bandwidth. Making a funny picture and uploading it was the BBC's example.

Plate tectonics. The plates on the East coast are "flat" for all practical purposes. The plates on the West coast are "flat" with many "jagged" edges protruding upwards. They slide underneath each other as opposed to just sliding. The East coast dissipates the energy over a wider area thus felt by more. However, I'll take an earthquake any day as opposed to a tornado!

I thought I made that point... Television stations and network provide a service to their clients (yes, I know, and was making the point that they pay for this service).

Yet the programming, apparently something that A LOT of people choose to watch, is provided for free. That's a pretty good bargain. If advertisers didn't think it was worth it, they wouldn't buy ads, and broadcast television would disappear on its own and then internet providers could have all the TV spectrum they wanted.

I'll take the "free" on my end any day of the week. Advertisers pay for the production of the programming and the distribution of it and I can watch it at will with the help of my CM DVR. I pay for use of a 3G wireless hotspot limited to 2 gigs of data/month and 5¢ a Kb after that so I can use a PC at a place that can't get cable internet or DSL, on top of a $30 wireless plan for my Droid, on top of my $30 calling plan. You don't really think those nice wireless companies are going to suddenly up that to 50 gigs/month at no extra charge so I can download all the broadcast shows I watch now for free on an HDTV do you? If you do, I know of some "submerged" real estate I could sell you down here in SE Texas...

You don't have to subscribe to free OTA TV. You don't have any 2 year contracts to sign, small data caps to worry with, and bills coming in the mail each month. And I get to watch the major networks in HD on my 50 inch Panasonic Plasma HDTV. No eyestraining to see a poor video feed on that small 3 inch screen on your cell phone. I don't care to watch TV, play video games, and surf the internet on that small of a screen.

If OTA broadcast TV disappears, everybody (those who can afford it) will have to pay for everything. And even if providers still allowed "unlimited" data plans (which they won't, even assuming that they really do now), their systems would quickly become so overloaded that nobody would get adequate service. Then they would raise rates and complain that they need even more bandwidth.

And cable companies charge fees so large as to almost give the impression that they are selling you the programming, yet nearly all of that programming is actually commercial, subsidized by companies who pollute it with countless ads. It's like the pizza delivery guy expecting you to pay him full value for the pie when you already charged it to your credit card at the time of ordering.

I'm old enough to remember nearly two decades before satellite TV, back when cable TV was new. Cable was a relatively cheap way for fringe reception communities to get local channels better than they could with normal antennas. You paid for a community reception and distribution system.

Later, cable stations popped up, promising commercial free programming in exchange for a monthly fee from cable TV subscribers. Local municipalities had cable TV commissions that regulated the cable TV rates in town and decided which additional "pay" stations would be added to the local channel lineup. They basically decided which "cable" TV feeds were worth the money. then came the movie channels, which are still mainly commercial free (as far as I know...I don't have or watch cable anymore). then it happened. Cable stations began running more and more advertisements. In fact, "home shopping" networks appeared that took ads to a whole new level.

Don't try to talk semantics about what is "free" TV and what is not. Public radio and TV have always been set up as either commercial or non-commercial stations. Commercial stations have always paid for their service via time based advertisement fees.

Cable and satellite still take money for advertising time slots, but then they turn around and charge the end user also.

I have no problem with people purchasing pay TV services. if they see value in them, great! I do have a problem with them crying for more spectrum simply so they can eliminate their competition and force people into either purchasing their service or doing without.

Perhaps justalurker would be perfectly fine paying a new toll for EVERY road that he drives, even his local streets and roads. Perhaps he would be fine paying a toll for every block of sidewalk that he walks on. Oh, and maybe he would be perfectly OK with paying an entrance fee in order to go into any store, restaurant, or other business establishment, whether he plans to purchase something or not.

The bottom line is that we have broadcasting services that are free (to the end user) and there are entities that are crying that they need to have this spectrum in order to provide their own service. Gosh, what ever happened to innovation? perhaps they should look for a different and new way to provide their services. That is what cable did. That is what satellite did.

In other words, as with pretty much all of the entitlement programs that were originally created as a safety net for American citizens - and especially in just the last decade, literally millions of fraudsters and system abusers, many of who actually have a higher, true income level than the basically honest suckers subsidizing them, will be the beneficiaries.

What???

You'd be less confused if you saw Ramm's first reply.