AVS Official Topic - The FCC & Broadcast Spectrum - Page 12

In Spectrum, Wishing Won't Make It So

http://www.tvnewscheck.com/articles/2010/07/09/daily.5/


The new technology could be something like DVB-T2, with MPEG-4, which the UK is implementing now for HD, though perhaps not gracefully. As I understand it, up to 4 or 5 HD channels are planned on one 8MHz mux/RF channel, but I can't comment as to the quality and I think only 3 are currently active.

In our case, trying to do this would probably mean to simulcasting all over again, but we have a problem now. We don't have 52-69 any more from which to operate a new ATSC MPEG-4 service or SBTVD or some other service.

This will be made even more difficult if we try taking away more channels during a 2nd transition period.

New transmission schemes to reduce broadcasters' bandwidth, it seems, will have to administered in flash cut fashion. Is there anything that would prevent having future TVs to be software defined? With that, when the flash cut to a new standard occurs, it would just mean running a CD. Announce the intention to go to a new standard at some point 5 or 7 years out, and have new TVs be manufactured to be software definable.

If Funky CHarlie wants to grab more bandwidth, they'd better test a new standard more thoroughly and not screw over broadcasters. But I'm afraid that would be wishful thinking on my part.

No matter what, switching to a new standard couldn't be completed by 2012 when the FCC wanted to finish the spectrum grab. Somehow the current administration at the FCC had some idea that grabbing 120 MHz from broadcast would be easy. Where they got their initial 50% usage numbers from is anybodys guess, but they were just plain wrong. Mid Wyoming yeah, Denver, No, L.A... Heck NO, are you crazy!!!

Jeez! We haven't finished the FIRST Digital TV Transition YET!

It depends on how you define finish. If the spectrum is reallocated by 2012 with a timetable for TV stations to vacate it then the deal is done and the grab would be hard to reverse. To actually have that spectrum vacant of TV by the end of 2012 would take a lot more money and work.

I've been following along here, and maybe I'm just ignorant because I'm not in the broadcast business or wireless business, but I don't see how the FCC grabbing spectrum is going to do anything towards getting broadband to rural areas. Isn't that what the NBP is all about?

Right now it sounds like it's all about getting more bandwidth to metro areas. I'm sure there's plenty of spectrum available in rural areas like I live in but there's a huge lack of infrastructure. Simply allocating more spectrum isn't going to fix that. It's kind of funny to listen to people who use cell phones regularly around here. Much of the local terrain prevents cell phone use. They all know where the hot spots are and pull over and stop when they need to make a call.

I haven't read anything about wiring rural areas for broadband which is the only way I'll ever get it. From my point of view it's a bad tradeoff to give up much of my free HD OTA so that more people in metro areas can get low res TV on their handheld devices.

Chuck

The Obama administration is not interested in wiring the country for internet. They are interested in going wireless. They presume that it would be cheaper. They presume wrong (because politicians are dumber than dirt). (1) It would cost a small fortune to erect the billion-or-so cell towers needed so the whole plan is preposterous. (2) This entire country could be wired for DSL within a year. Easily. Just use the existing phone lines that already run into 99.9% of everybody's homes. And free over-the-air television could keep channels 2 to 51.
I never heard him say that but knowing McCain, he would not be in favor of giving-away channels 31 to 69 to the cellular industry either. So if McCain had won instead of Obama, we'd not even be discussing this broadband plan. He would have thrown it into the trash and said, "Let the free market extend internet to rural communities. Government has no business interfering."
Yeah and we all know how great that worked for the UK's DAB (digital radio). They did manage to squeeze 8-10 channels on a single space, but the result was crap. Some stereo stations were forced to demote themselves to monoaural (is this the 1960s?), and the classical station sounds worse than its FM counterpart, due to extreme compression. BOTTOM LINE: I don't trust anything the UK engineers claim about 5 HDs in the same channels. They frakked it up with DAB and will frak it up again with DTV.

Not to disagree with your overall point, but I seriously doubt this to be the case. My phone lines won't even support dialup at anything higher than 26.4k, and others around me are often stuck at 14.4k. I have serious doubts that those lines will support DSL at any speed.

I somehow doubt a lot of the most rural phone lines will support DSL. When we'd call Verizon to complain about the low dialup speed, they'd say "As long as you can hear the person at the other end, we're doing all we're required to do." And that's all they cared to do.

- Trip

If channels 31 and up disappear, the transition will probably be rapid. For example we'll see the CW channel moved over to the main CBS channel, MyNetTV will move to the main FOX channel, and so on. (Or vice-versa.) Then at a certain date, say 1/1/2012, all stations above 30 will be turned off. ----- The MPEG2 to 4 transition would necessarily take longer, if it happened at all.
Well..... you're wrong. ;-) My friend out in Unionville had crummy lines too, getting just 24k analog or sometimes 40k digital. Slow. But then he got a DSL upgrade and now has a reliable 3000 k connection. You see DSL operates by expanding the 4000 hertz narrowband filter upto ~100,000 or more broadband. The existing line might still have random noise but the DSLAM box is much better at handling it. The wider bandwidth improves the overall speed by a HUGE margin (100 times faster).

His new DSL is the same cost as he was paying previously ($15/month), and the upgrade was done literally overnight. He loves it.

My phone lines only got 26.4k dialup. But I upgraded to AT&T's 1.5MBps DSL and everything works great. I love it.

The reason Verizon doesn't care about there old lines is because they are expanding FiOS to 70% of their footprint and selling or spinning off the other areas. Either you'll get FiOS or a new carrier within the next few years, and the rural carriers will either need to upgrade or die as the cell companies put up more towers.

I thought that DSL was limited to a few miles from the CO to get speeds resembling broadband? IDSL can work out to about 7.5 miles, with speeds of 144kbps.

How far apart are rural CO's? I suspect that 7.5 miles is easily exceeded in many areas.

http://www.netstartechnology.net/what_is_dsl.htm

DSL can reach 15 miles if there's a repeater at the halfway point. However what most phone companies do is run fiber to a central point, hang a DSLAM off it, and then serve the 100 or houses in that neighborhood via existing phone lines. It's a quick and easy upgrade.
Precisely.

Here's my broadband plan (note broadband means any service greater than telephone narrowband) (i.e. >>4000 hertz)

- Take a page out of the FDR years which mandated telephone companies must wire all homes with telephone lines
- Update the law so it says telephone companies must provide DSL (or FiOS or equivalent service) to all homes by 1/1/2012
- Use the already-existing Universal Service Fund (USF) to cover the costs

Done. Since 99.9% of homes have telephone wires running into them, there's no digging required. No manual labor. No disruption. Simply install a ~$100 DSLAM in each neighborhood. Within a year's time, virtually everyone would have access to 1000 kbit/s or more service. That's 20+ times faster than what they had before (28k or 56k).

Over time those DSL would be phased-out and upgraded to fiber, but as of 2012 the US Congress could claim, "Not one single american citizen is still stuck on dialup."

They didn't care 10 years ago, either. Also, I thought Verizon had stopped building out FiOS now.

- Trip

If McCain had had his way, broadcasters would have had to bid in auction for their digital channels back in the late nineties, and the entire digital transition would have been stillborn.

And, no, he would support giving channels 31 and up to the cellular industry -- but he would support auctioning those channels off to the highest bidder. And the highest bidder probably would be the big cell companies.

Don't kid yourself -- broadcasting doesn't seem to have many friends left.

Verizon stopped negotiating new FiOS agreements. They will build out the areas they have agreements for.

You sure hit the nail on the head, Chuck!

I (mostly) agree with "theaveng" that at least some "reasonable facsimile" of DSL could fairly well be provided to practically every home in America that gets telephone service -- probably NOT by 1-1-2012, since that's now less than 18 months away, but at least within the next 3 to 4 years -- something of at least 1 Mbps or more to pretty much ALL telephone subscribers, with "more to come" as true fiber-optic cable could be built out over time (and it's still my firm belief that a complete, nationwide, fiber-optic buildout should come to be seen as something of a national mandate sooner, rather than later, but something like he's suggesting makes perfect sense for at least the short term).

As for which politician would do what (and them being dumber than dirt, etc.) and wanting to "go wireless," etc., I really find it hard to believe ANYONE intelligent enough to be a regular contributor to THIS forum can actually believe that anyone smart enough to actually get elected to Congress, much less President of the United States is actually STUPID ENOUGH to NOT realize how utterly ridiculous it is to not at least be OPEN to the idea/realization that "complete wireless broadband for everyone" is a pipe dream so big NOBODY could ever smoke it all!

IF, right now, even, only a small percentage of the people who have broadband access decided to "go wireless" instead of sticking with their high-speed wired connections, like most of us, ALL of the wireless networks would immediately be SO congested there wouldn't be ANY room left for phone calls, texting, or ANYTHING ELSE. If 100% of ALL available electromagnetic spectrum were made available to "wireless communications," i.e. ALL TV and Radio stations were shut down, and only those frequencies used by emergency services, police, etc. remained, I'm CERTAIN there STILL wouldn't be anywhere NEAR enough bandwidth to accomodate anything CLOSE to what's being used "in the pipe" by those of us who are using high-speed wired broadband, which usually STARTS at 5 Mbps or faster for cable connections (1.5 Mbps for DSL) and goes up from there... My current cable speed is 20 Mbps, which I don't always take full advantage of, but sometimes I do, when I have something big to download -- and there are a good many services offering even FASTER speeds, and people taking advantage of that.

Soooo, let's say EVERYONE went "wireless." Even IF everyone were stuck with the current wireless speeds of roughly 1.5 Mbps average, assuming all of us who are USED to having speeds much faster than that would pretty much ALWAYS be maxing out that speed, and also that we WOULDN'T put up with the current caps and would DEMAND a change in policies, I'd like to know WHERE all that bandwidth would come from??? There's just NO WAY! Not even if every scintilla of TV and Radio frequency were freed up, along with all the cordless phone frequencies, too!

This is about a sort of "power grab," a grab for as much spectrum as fast as they can get it as they can because certainly the wireless industry DOES want to EXPAND its capabilities in the broadband area... But to say what they're going to be doing is providing some "nationwide wireless broadband network" is nothing but a bunch of HOOEY! As you said, Chuck, AT BEST, it'll give the "Yuppies" in the major metro areas better access to wireless broadband, and perhaps a little bit more in SOME suburban and surrounding areas -- but there's NO WAY it's going to make the kind of REACH a TRUE national broadband plan would, could or should.

This is NOT about "politics," about Republicans OR Democrats (or any other party), as I'm pretty sure the only party involved is the one thrown with the color GREEN. Once again, it's about short-sighted thinking and a LACK OF VISION. This is tantamount to saying, in 1935, that rather than running electricity to all the rural areas, we'll just make sure all the cities get plenty and they can shine spotlights out in the country at night, or something.

The sad fact is that NOBODY wants to pay for infrastructure these days -- neither public NOR private entities... we have crumbling bridges, water and sewer systems that are on the verge of failing in major cities, electrical grids that are outdated by 50 years and if hit by a major solar wind would leave us in the dark for as much as 18 months, etc. Building out a BRAND NEW fiber-optic infrastructure is a chance to finally build a NEW infrastructure for the first time in MANY years and do it right, but with rare exceptions (and only in markets where it looks PROFITABLE) it's NOT being done (AT&T is currently in the process of expanding its U-Verse into the two-county market I live in, and just did some work in the junction box 100 yards down the street from me at the bottom of the block a couple weeks ago, so I'm within a month or two -- but I live in a reasonably affluent suburb where almost everyone already has cable and/or satellite and/or DSL. I have DISH for TV, since Charter kept raising their TV rates, but not their service, but still use them for internet and phone -- for now).

The QUESTION, however, is HOW FAR OUT into the county will AT&T run these lines? Parts of my county are VERY rural (currently not served by cable TV, either, nor close enough to the telephone switching station for DSL -- I'm willing to BET AT&T WON'T run U-Verse to those homes, either, even though in many cases, there are entire NEIGHBORHOODS, many rather affluent, in those areas). THAT'S where THE LAW should come in and say... "USF" fund says -- YOU RUN your fiber-optic lines TO EVERY HOME in your service area, PERIOD!
Jeff

The latest Verizon Wireless commercials leave nothing to the imagination. For decades, the public owned the airwaves ... now, the big telcos and the lemmings who buy their foolishness by the truckload will 'rule the air.'

Facebooking from every streetcorner. God help our country.

The problem is don't truly understand what it means to be "progressive". This type of behavior is the way "progressives" behave. Check your history, Woodrow Wilson helped AT&T start the process of securing its monopoly over telephone service. ----- Then FDR consolidated monopoly status for AT&T with the Telecommunications Act of 1934. "Progressives" have always preferred having only 1-3 companies dominating an industry to having a lot of companies competing. This Broadband Plan hands control of communications to ATT and Verizon, who in turn can be controlled by the government.
Citation please - why do you think McCain likes the cellphone industry any better than the broadcast industry, and would basically just do whatever ATT/Verizon tells him to do? McCain and I have similar viewpoints; we're both republicans. We both hate the idea of monopolies or duopolies (they kill the free market and choice). ----- I agree with him that TV stations should pay for their channels, but that doesn't mean I am a sellout to ATT/Verizon just because they have a lot of dollars to buy 31-to-51. I doubt McCain is either.

I can't believe I'm sitting here defending McCain but at the same time I don't think you should assume he's a d___ either, and would give a giant "thumbs up" to the FCC's plan to brown nose ATT and Verizon. Unless of course you have facts to back it up.



I've been saying for a couple days now that Free TV is dying, to be replaced by a pay-to-see model. And now this guy comes out with this:
The corporations are leading us down a path towards $1000-to-2000 per year bills just so we can see the latest episode of Stargate, or hear the news, or get a warning about severe weather. What was once free, they are locking-up behind paywalls and ye are cheering it along as technological "advancement" when it's actually the opposite.

theaveng, I'm not quite sure why you say it's "progressives" who have supported local monopolies and/or duopolies for utilities such as telephone, power and/or cable companies... It's pretty clear WHY this came about, however, when you look at photographs from major metropolitan areas in the early, "wild west" days of both the telephone and electrical industries -- especially telephone -- during the first couple of decades of the 20th century...

I've seen some photographs of power and telephone lines running between buildings and down streets where there were literally DOZENS of separate polls and lines creating something that looked like a literal JUNGLE of "cable vines." Not only could such a system never truly work from logistical standpoints, in all but the very biggest markets, none of the companies could truly be competitive except, perhaps, by going around and unhooking each other's lines and hooking up their OWN lines, and so forth. So it was pretty much NECESSARY to establish some sort of "local monopoly/duopoly" systems for most markets based on some system of companies bidding to each city or county or whatever metro area was relevant...

Of course with wireless companies none of this is at all relevant, and with today's technologies, it's actually possible to have multiple land-line phone companies sharing the same land lines IF a broadband connection (or other line capable of carrying MANY signals) is being used. It's even possible to use electrical lines for communications transmission, as those of us who have set up a "power-line" home ethernet network have discovered.

As for Verizon's new "Rule the Air" commercials, I'd seen them literally a couple dozen times, and hadn't even caught on to the new slogan until you mentioned it, cubsfan, and I actually made a point of LOOKING for it, lol, and checking to see IF the "new" commercial I'd been noticing was the same one I was thinking of. I'm not all that "impressed" nor threatened by those commercials. But I still contend the FCC is full of hogwash with this "National Wireless Broadband" plan... About the CLOSEST I think they can hope to come to a TRUE national broadband plan using nothing but wireless is a level of universal broadband roughly equal to the level of universal public mass rapid transportation currently available via AmTrak!

If they want something approaching what the AIRLINES provide, we need NATIONAL TO-EVERY-HOME Fiber Optics, PERIOD.
Jeff

Same difference. Verizon has given up expanding the FIOS system. They're just living up to the agreements they made. In an unknown time frame...

Where do the TV antenna manufacturers stand on this issue? I assume they will support the NAB's position.
Has anyone seen or heard anything about preserving the TV spectrum from:

• AntennaCraft
• Antennas Direct / Terrestrial Digital
• Blonder Tongue
• Channel Master / PCT
• Cornet
• Delhi (Jerrold)
• Eagle Aspen
• GE
• Perfect Vision
• Philips
• RCA
• Terk
• Winegard
• Or any other antenna company

Denny, of Denny's TV Antenna Sales & TV Antenna Source, suggested that all broadcast networks add a Free logo at the bottom of the picture to remind all viewers (antenna, cable, or satellite) that their network programming is available free of charge to all households using an antenna.

Such a public awareness campaign is sorely needed given the anti-broadcast agenda of the FCC.

My only ISSUE with that is that I'm already pretty ANNOYED with all the LOGOs and ADs and whatnots that are continually being splayed all over the bottoms of our TV screens, covering at least PART of our picture part or all of the time, already... That would be just ONE MORE ANNOYANCE.

HOWEVER, that said, it may well be worth it to REMIND all the seemingly mind-numbed masses of which channels actually ARE still available WITHOUT having to pay a cable or satellite bill (and, more importantly, WHICH channels will be available via JUST an antenna in times of vital emergencies when those paid services might not work).

Of course most of the cable and satellite services FINALLY put all the local channels on the SAME channels on their systems a few years back they actually came in on if using an antenna, BUT since the digital transition, those channel assignments are NOW often no longer VALID (for instance, my local ABC affiliate SHOULD BE Channel 62, but still comes in on 13 on cable or satellite -- EXCEPT it's digital tower build-out has been DELAYED due to a legal conflict over its build site in a national park, so they're back to transmitting on Channel 13, for the most part -- at least that's what the Public Service ads they keep running say -- where I live I get poor antenna reception, so I'm stuck with cable or satellite receivers, either way).

At any rate -- IF the broadcast channels DO start running a continual LOGO like that, I would think it would be pretty much MANDATORY they include what channel number they come in on, with all the confusion since the transition. Three of my four major network channels still come in on their "historic" VHF assignments on cable or satellite (with the fourth on its "historic" low UHF assignment, but I doubt that's where any of the "bottom three" really are, given what I keep reading in here about the terrible reception for DT in VHF -- especially low-band VHF.
Jeff

In the current economy, many families are looking for ways to reduce their expenses. Cutting the monthly cable or satellite bill in favor of an indoor, attic, or rooftop antenna is an excellent option especially now that HDTV is broadcast by the major networks. Most cable companies charge an additional fee for HDTV programming. To add insult to injury, the government taxes cable & satellite services.

People have who have depended on cable their most of their lives, may not think of this option on their own. However, if the networks constantly remind all their viewers that they could be enjoying their favorite programs for free, then more viewers may consider this practical high-quality option. Better picture quality than cable without a monthly bill - what's not to like?

For those who may not be aware of all the broadcast network choices, please see:

• List of US OTA TV Networks
• Lists of television stations in North America

Jeff, I agree with the issue you raised. However, if Free network logos raise public awareness to the benefits of broadcast TV, they would definitely be worth it.

Being a via satellite subscriber, that would tick me off ... especially on a network station that CHARGES satellite and cable providers for the pleasure of extending their 'free' signal to viewers.

When all television is provided free to satellite/cable I'll be happy.

If the satellite and cable providers are going to charge their customers for free network programing, the networks should share in those profits especially since they have borne the costs to produce them.

When I visited my parents in Nebraska a month ago I noticed that their local NBC affiliate, KNOP North Platte, ended it's news broadcast with "this news broadcast has been a FREE service of Hoak Media." KNOP is Hoak Media's red headed step child. So far they've invested all their money in KHAS in Hastings. KNOP is "stuck" on RF2 with a single 480i signal. We should have known that low VHF would be a problem for digital. As I remember channel 2 always had problems with lightning. What was simply a line in analog becomes a totally undecodable signal in digital.

On another note, I think I know why the FCC is going with this "voluntary" stick, and why they are so upset that no one is going for it. I think they realize that there are real civil rights and first amendment issues involved, and if they try to force it that they will have their heads handed to them by the courts. Broadcasters, stick to guns, call their bluff, they only have power over you if you let them have it.

If they say 2 + 2 = 5, then it is so.

The TRUTH of the matter is that the local cable companies are REQUIRED to offer all the local network affiliates to their customers, and at the same time are also REQUIRED to PAY THOSE AFFILIATES "for the privilege" of ensuring they continue to have high ratings in cable households (seems to me like if the cable companies DIDN'T carry their signals, the local affiliates would lose as much in ratings value as the cable companies would in sales value to customers). At any rate, sometimes local stations have "bidding wars" with the local cable companies where they want to raise their "must-carry" rate more than the cable company is willing to pay, and THEN they run these REALLY NASTY commercials on the station for the last month or two prior to the END of negotiations telling the cable subscribers to make sure and CALL their cable company if they want to continue getting that channel, because the "unfair cable company" is about to cause them to no longer be able to view their local station (when it actually doesn't cost the local broadcaster ANYTHING for the cable company to provide their signal, and is actually doing them a favor -- although I CAN ALSO see the argument that a lot of cable customers wouldn't stick with the service if they couldn't get their local stations through it, as well).

At any rate, although I continually have come down on the side of BROADCASTERS in this thread, this is one issue where I think the broadcasters seem greedy with the cable companies -- particularly when you consider that all they end up doing, in the end, is causing the cable companies to RAISE RATES for THEIR customers.

As for satellite companies, well, they ALL charge extra for local carriage, so I guess it's not as much of an issue with them (although there's a fairly standard fee of something like $5 or $5.95, I think).

ON this subject, OTA, considering local stations ARE getting something in the neighborhood of $1, each, per subscriber, per station from cable companies (probably similar from satellite companies), that can conceivably come to a HUGE part of their revenue! If there are 100,000 local cable subscribers, that's an extra $100,000 per month for each station! So if they start running a little "logo ad" letting people know they CAN get HDTV FOR FREE with an antenna, every one who drops cable is $1 less revenue for them each month. This might put TV stations in a bit of a conflict-of-interest situation.
Jeff