AVS Official Topic - The FCC & Broadcast Spectrum - Page 13

However, as antenna viewers increase, there will be greater public support for protecting the TV spectrum from the anti-broadcast agenda of the FCC.

In rural Missouri, the only options I have are dial up and satellite internet. The $18/month is all I can afford, especially considering how unreliable and problematic satellite internet is for its hefty price of 60 to $70/month.

I could not pay for the price of wireless, considering it would be $50 to $60 for a 5GB limit, which I already get close to on the slowest internet on earth--dial up. (I have my computer download a bunch of things over night like videos; that's how i do it.)

Considering outrageous overage fees on wireless of $50/GB or so, I would have to end up paying hundreds of dollars per month if I ever decided to start downloading and playing with Linux Operating systems again.

It aggravates mes to know an unreliable and expensive and basically unnecessary connection will probably mean the end of having OTA HDTV, or at least as many channels.

I'm thinking about righting a letter to my state reps and senators.

"$50/month for the unreliable wireless internet connection in the new wireless internet plan would be too expensive for many rural Missourians like myself. Considering it will take away many of the frequencies, and considering channels 2 to 13 are almost unusable in Missouri due to how often we get lightning that makes those channels absolutely unwatchable, we will be left with channels 14 to 30. So basically, I'm going to be LEFT with my dial up connection, but except now I'm basically not going to have any Television, and due to the squeeze of the spectrum, what little I do have will not be HD, what many have invested in to get OTA. That's not really good for rural Missourian's, eh?

What we do need is upgraded phone lines that support DSL. DSL is more reliable than wireless, faster than wireless, and will cost rural Missourians less per month than wireless. And with DSL, we will not have to worry about grabbing more spectrum once we've used all of the other sources that spectrum was stole from. We will eventually run out of spectrum, but we will not run out of wires. And most of all, we will still be able to watch TV for free in HD. It's a winning situation for rural Missouri."

Hopefully I'm not the only one sending this stuff... I know I'm not.

Your dial-up stays connected straight through overnight? When I had it, it used to cut off first exactly at the 4 hour point, and then less than every 4 hours after that if I re-connected and stayed on it.

By the time I got done paying for all the extra local calls from going over my monthly "call pack" limit, it turned out it was at least as much as DSL, if not more (fortunately I at least had DSL as an option).

PAYING for local calls? When I got internet I switched from per-call billing to unlimited calls - a flat $10 a month. Also: With some Dialup providers you can defeat the auto-disconnect by going into Task Manager and "ending" the ISP's program. Then it will never disconnect. It's great for downloading TV episodes via Utorrent.
I doubt it's that much. Not even a major channel like TNT gets more than 70 cents per month. Last I heard local channels were getting about 5 cents - that may have increased but not by a huge amount. Also if a cable company drops a channel, and the local station invokes the "must carry" rule to be reinstated, then they get zero payment from the cable company (per FCC rules).

My dialup is only $7 (getnetscape.com). I've also looked at wireless which is $40 per month through Cricket Wireless and no limit. I know that sounds high, but $30-50 is the typical cost for DSL or Cable Internet, so the pricetag is not unusual - http://www.mycricket.com/broadband/plans/40bb_rpr


Precisely. And I like your letter - only thing is I would shorten it to two sentences, otherwise the senator is unlikely to read it.

A couple of corrections to what you wrote:

First, cable companies aren't required to both carry and pay for local stations. Local TV stations must choose between must carry and retransmission consent. If they choose the former, they get carried but don't get paid. If they choose the latter, then they can ask for money in return for carriage, but cable companies are legally free to refuse to pay and just not carry the station.

Second, regarding the fees that stations are getting from cable companies -- those agreements are generally held confidential, but the indications that I've seen in trade publications are that the best deals that stations have managed to get have been in the 50 to 70 cents per month range. $1/month is the holy grail...and, so far, no one has apparently managed to get that yet.

But regarding the value of broadcasters to a cable system -- how well does anyone think that a cable system would do if it didn't carry the local ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC affiliates? Unfortunately, since retransmission consent agreements in a given market typically don't expire at the same time, we're not likely to see the answer to that question any time soon. But my suspicion is that any cable system that failed to offer the major local stations would suffer massive subscriber losses. In the end, the cable systems will pay up because they *know* that they need to offer that programming to retain subscribers.

I got a letter back from my Senator who is up for re-election. (Michael Bennet, D-CO) It was obvious from his letter that enough people had written him to get his attention.

To be entirely honest, I knew it wasn't actually a full dollar per station (although I also knew that a lot of stations were pushing for that amount, and had read that some were approaching that amount -- and that some of the cable stations are now close to that -- and that ESPN, which DISH REQUIRED me to get -- entire SPORTS package when I signed up for ALL the Pay TV stations -- is getting more than $4 per month all by itself -- that probably covers all the ESPN channels, but still!).

I wasn't aware that if a station pushes the "must-carry" rule they have to give up any payment. But as you said, NO cable company is likely to DROP a local network affiliate precisely BECAUSE no cable company that doesn't carry the local channels is likely to do well. Certainly, if I couldn't get my local channels by whatever paid service I'm subscribed to, I'd be changing services pronto, as a great deal of the programming I watch IS on one of the network affiliates (I even watch some local programming ).

No matter what, OTA, I support your idea for broadcast stations to run some sort of "free HD broadcast" logo on the bottom of the screens. Perhaps that could even spur the cable and satellite companies to begin carrying the CW in HD, which NONE of them currently do in my market, even though it's available in HD if you pick it up via antenna. I have no idea WHY they carry Fox, NBC, ABC and CBS in HD but neither CW OR the local PBS stations' HD feeds (actually, the cable company DOES have an HD PBS feed, but DISH doesn't).

Maybe THIS is where the must-carry vs. pay-to-carry argument starts to get complicated... Perhaps those two channels either want too much for their HD feeds, of there's just no obligation with must-carry for HD feeds? In the case of the HD PBS feed, the one that was available via the local cable company when I left them (March 2009) didn't match with the local channel's programming -- I did a bit of investigating and discovered it actually matched the programming for the nearest channel in neighboring North Carolina, although there was NEVER an actual channel logo on the feed, so I got the impression it was more of a sort of "national" PBS HD feed.
Jeff

FOX got 50 cents out of the Time-Warner negotiation a few months ago. That's very high. Most local stations only get a few cents - 5 or 10. Nowhere near a whole dollar.
For the local station it's a battle between getting X cents per home, or zero cents per home if they invoke must-carry. Cable companies are aware of that, so most times they simply wait for the local channel to cave. The local channel needs cable more than cable needs them.

Since the NAB has yet to provide a sample letter that tax-paying US citizens and voters can send to Congress encouraging them to do the right thing and preserve the TV spectrum, perhaps you might share the major points of your letter?

Yes, dreichen, can you scan and post your original letter and your senator's response? You seem VERY cogent with your take on these matters, so I'm thinking perhaps whatever YOU wrote might be good for all of us.
Jeff

Just this month Dish Network is including local stations at no additional charge. They lowered my bill by $5. I purchase the lowest priced HD package with no extras. Did they do this across the country?

Chuck

Yeah and DishTV raised the lowest-price tier from $19.99 (no locals) to $39.99 (locals included). So effectively the price went up.

Trivia -

"The investment per connection of a full fiber access line to the home replacing all copper or coax is 1150-1500 USD in the Netherlands, all-included. The equivalent number in the USA as quoted by Verizon is in the same ballpark per home connected." - arstechnica

Most of that cost is from laborers digging-up the dirt in your front yard. It seems more logical to use the existing copper and coax for internet - it would be both faster (could be done by 2012) and cheaper (no digging).

Yeah, that figures . I knew it was too good to last forever that their "Family" tier was so much cheaper than everyone else's, who had been charging the same price as their first "non-Family" tier for it.

So it's effectively gone from being one of the best deals around to now being equal to one of the worst, as you only get about half the amount of channels as the next tier for the same price.

Whatever happened to "but, it's for the children"?

Yet another reason to go OTA and to preserve & protect the TV spectrum from the anti-broadcast FCC agenda.

I agree. I get 13 channels (6 in HD) and two of them are The Retro Television Network and This TV which are classic TV and Movie channels. Those go along with the rest of the main locals. With Netflix and buying DVDs that I'm ineterested in (my alacarte programming) I have more stuff to watch than I have time for. Not to mention the $1,000 a year I save fom not having pay TV.

I used to pay a high cable bill to watch TV Land and AMC. Both channels have gone down the toilet over the past two years. Also for ESPN to watch some college football. But thanks to The Retro Television Network, This TV, and ESPN3.com I'm watching stuff for free what I used to pay for.

White House looking for spectrum, including 120 MHz from TV
28 June, 2010

It isn't that bad. My brother got the new $39.99 package, and it has all the channels he wanted (FOX News, Disney, Nickelodeon, Speed, Sci-Fi). The only thing missing was Outdoor Life but the phone agent added it free-of-charge.

So really all Dish changed was remove the $19.99 Family Package. No more bargain basement option. Now you have to go with the Top 100.

Great ideas! Per the following web page, you already have some excellent material on which to base your letter to congress:

Letters to Congress
By Robert Longley, About.com Guide


See the following link Letters to Congress for additional suggestions.

The Right to Write
Some Suggestions on Writing Your Congressman
by Morris K. Udall, Member, U.S. Congress

• Write Your Representative
• Senators of the 111th Congress

I guess it depends on what package you had. My bill went from $42.23 to $37.23.


This all may be be true if you live in a city or the suburbs but not where I live. My "subdivision" has eleven 10 acre parcels. Most of the lots out here are 5 to 40 acres. It takes a lot of wiring to reach only a few customers.

Chuck

Yeah but you have phone service don't you? Then you can get Broadband via DSL, through those same wires. All the local company has to do is offer it.

Not if the switch is too far away. No DSL in my neighborhood.

The phone company is NOT required to offer DSL, and if the customer density is too low - they probably won't.

I'd say it's more likely that a cable company may offer internet service than the phone . If neither do - try ISDN or satellite. (I doubt you would want to pay for Frame relay type service ).

Assuming there is cable in the local area. Which in rural areas like mine, there is no cable TV. Only satellite and OTA.

- Trip

DSL is VERY dependent on how close the user is to the closest telephone switching station. It's been quite some time since I read up on this, so "the stats" could have changed, but the last time I did, you had to be within just 2 or 3 miles of the closest telephone switching station to get DSL, which quite likely entirely puts most rural locations out of the running for DSL. I guess it's possible they've come up with amplifiers that can extend that distance since I last read up on this, but I'm sure there's still a limit, and my understanding is that the further away you are, the more limited your broadband speed is, as well.

Of course if either the local cable company OR phone company has bothered to run fiber optic cable out to "your neck of the woods," then you should "be set." I assume there's still the need for some sort of "booster" even with fiber optics, but I don't have anything near the sort of technical knowledge to say what.

From what I understand, the sort of "broadband" offered by HughesNet provides something around 750 Kbps for something like $75 per month, which is, I guess, a great deal for someone who simply HAS TO have faster-than-dialup speeds and is in a remote area where there's no other choice. For the rest of us, that's a TERRIBLE deal, and frankly, I think HughesNet is really taking advantage of the position its "over-a-barrel" customers are in (my figures may not be entirely accurate -- I'm going off ballpark figures my DISH dealer threw at me when I bought DISH service and asked him about Satellite internet and he told me it couldn't TOUCH what I was getting via cable). If you live in a no-service area and already have DISH or DirecTV, perhaps there's a bundle-discount available.

As for cable service, I had a friend a number of years back who lived in a very rural area on a dirt road off a river. She had a nice home, built-to-owner specs, on 26 acres, but she was about 1/4 mile off the main road, which DID have Charter cable running on it. She actually offered to buy the cable to run cable to her home (there were maybe a handful of other people living on her road, and a handful on the other side of the river), but they still refused to give her service. My guess is that the cost of amplifiers from the main road to her home and servicing it was just too prohibitive. These companies do calculations for things like that, and unless they think they can make a profit even if you PAY for the cable to your home they won't do it. I guess they didn't think so.
Jeff

I believe I'm about 10 miles from the nearest telephone switching station.

My current internet is Wildblue and like most people I buy the cheapest package - 512 Kbps download which downloads files at about 60 K bytes/sec. About a week ago they messed up and gave me the next level up in service for a couple of hours. I was doing a software update and it downloaded at 115 K bytes/sec. I did a couple of those speed tests and they came in at around 1 Mbps.

I've been suspicious for some time that the satellite transmits a large file to you as fast as it can where it is buffered in your modem and dribbled out to your computer at your maximum rate. Large files always come down at a very consistent maximum speed of close to 60 K bytes/sec for the entire file, no changes in speed or pauses. If a files does download at a slower speed it tends to have huge variations in speed.

Chuck

I've written three letters so far. The first I hand wrote before the NBP was released in response to the NAB ad, and it contained the following text:

It has come to my attention that there are telecommunications and other technology companies that are lobbying Congress and the FCC to limit or eliminate free over the air broadcast television. I’m writing you today to ask you to oppose any such attempts. Free over the air broadcast television is both a vital service for low income Americans and an economically wise alternative to pay television services for the rest of us.

Free over the air broadcast television is no longer the snowy analog television of our youth, it is crystal clear 720p and 1080i HD digital television delivered in such a manner that many urban living Americans can receive it literally with a piece of wire clothes hanger. Given the quality of current broadcasts, and the great potential of the technology, it is easy to understand why companies like such as Verizon, AT&T, or others, which have large stakes in pay television services, would desire to kill or limit digital broadcast television in its infancy. Please, technology and telecommunications companies need to grow by supplying better goods and services at better prices, not by using Congress or the FCC to steal bandwidth from an industry which has been a vital part of American society for over 50 years.

As a point of reference, I’m not part of the broadcast television industry. In fact, I currently derive a significant portion of my personal income from supplying products to both Verizon FiOS and Comcast pay television services. I am simply a concerned citizen and consumer.

The second letter contained the following:

March 16, 2010

The Honorable Michael Bennet
United States Senate
702 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-0606

Senator Bennet,

As I’m sure you are aware, the FCC presented its broadband plan to Congress on March 17th, 2010. While this plan included many worthy goals and proposals there is one of the proposals that I must ask you to actively oppose and reject. That proposal is the proposed reallocation of 120 Megahertz of television spectrum (20 RF channels or 41% of the current allocation for broadcast television).

You will be told that broadcast television is an antiquated technology, utilized by a small minority of Americans, which must be limited to make way for the new era of broadband. The truth is that ANALOG broadcast television was an antiquated technology that was only utilized by a small minority of Americans for that reason. But, broadcast television is no longer analog, it is DIGITAL, and as such, it is no longer antiquated, and in fact is truly competitive to subscription services.

In 2005, in my current neighborhood, I received 9 English language analog channels of varying quality from excellent to barely watchable. Now, I receive 23 channels, not counting Spanish Language and repeated PBS channels, most of which can be received using a simple set top antenna. All of these channels are not only watchable, but are crystal clear, and 10 of those channels are broadcast in either 1080i or 720p High Definition. For a period of the interim I subscribed to cable, which had a marginally larger number of channels, and an average monthly bill of $60. Digital broadcast television, not only isn’t antiquated, it currently is a high quality, economical alternative to subscription services.

While the utilization rate for broadcast television is still low, I believe that this is primarily because that, only 9 month after the official transition, people don’t realize the free resource they have unlimited access to. For a generation now people have been conditioned to believe that a quality television signal could only be received through a subscription service, and many have fallen victim to many myths and half truths propagated during the transition.

On the other hand, the presumed big winners in the FCC’s proposed frequency auction, Verizon and AT&T, are both major players in the subscription television market. (Can you say “major conflict of interest.”) The fact is that a fully utilized 49 channels of digital broadcast television (the current allotment) has the potential of increasing availability of broadband as a lowered demand in subscription television could force wireline providers to provide discounted broadband services as well as freeing up bandwidth on their systems for faster speeds. In other words, it is in the public interest for the market to be allowed to mature before any such reallocation is implemented.

Thank you for considering my comments. I hope that you will consider the true public interest over the interests of the major telecoms and will actively oppose this proposed reallocation of television frequencies.

The third letter contained this text:

June 12, 2010

The Honorable Michael Bennet
United States Senate
702 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-0606

Senator Bennet,

It has been 3 months since the last time that I wrote you, and Obama appointed Democrat, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is continuing to fast track his plan to destroy local over the air broadcast television with both the reallocation of 41% of broadcast television spectrum and new oppressive taxes and regulations. Mr. Genachowski is making the Democratic Party look less like the party of the poor and disenfranchised, and more like the party of the wealthy and well placed.

Mr. Genachowski is trying to push through his plan unnoticed even as broadcasters are showcasing new mobile DTV broadcasts in Washington D.C. The new mobile DTV broadcasts, which are already popular in other countries, promise to take pressure off wireless broadband networks by providing FREE news and entertainment video content direct to cell phones and other mobile devices (no subscription necessary). Meanwhile legislation to take a full spectrum inventory is languishing in Congress during an election year.

Congress needs to take control of this situation and protect the interests of the poor, elderly, and minorities who depend on the FREE services provided by local broadcasters. That is why I’m asking you to introduce, sponsor, or support legislation to place a moratorium on the reallocation of broadcast TV spectrum until at least there has been a full spectrum inventory. Also, I’m asking you to oppose oppressive new “fees” designed to drive broadcasters from the public broadcast spectrum.

Senator Bennet's response is attached.

I need to write him back and tell him that the current FCC plan has nothing to do with providing broadband to rural communities, and that the NAB (and I) support the limited licensing of TV white spaces for rural broadband networks.

 

Michael Bennet Letter.pdf 264.810546875k . file

Now that Daniel has shared his efforts with AVS, we need to follow his example and let Congress know that:

• Free OTA DTV is a vital part of our country.
• We, the tax payers & VOTERS, will be closely watching how Congress handles this important issue in this election year.