Wireless Spectrum and the DTV Transition

About a week ago Obama started pushing for a delay in the transition to Digital TV that has been scheduled for February. This has been a controversial issue for a while. Ill try to give a bit of a catch up for those of you who don't spend their spare time slobbering over one of the FCC's various new schemes (Im positive that all of you will be farmiliar with parts of this post but its all here to be somewhat complete).

For a long time the US government has been planning a forced switch from analogue to digital TV. This applies only to the free TV you get wirelessly from bunny ears not cable or satellite pay services. The reason for this is that with digital transmission the same number of channel can use much less wireless spectrum space freeing up more for other uses. More scientifically the wireless spectrum is called the electromagnetic spectrum. Which is the entire rang of electromagnetic radiation frequencies measured by the size of their wave in hertz (hz). The ingenious image below gives a good (and mostly accurate) idea of the wide uses for electromagnetic radiation.
(click for bigger image i hope) -shamelessly stolen from some forum

Ok so the US government (also the Canadian unfortunately I know little on this front) reserves sections of the wireless spectrum for a wide range of uses. Since 1994 spectrum licenses in the US have been determined through auctions. The spectrum range at issue here is from 470-806 Mhz (part of the section labeled Radio & TV in the image). It is considered prime real estate due to its ability to travel long distances and through walls. Instead of simply TV it could be used for say providing broadband wireless Internet. For the past 50 or so years this tiny slice of spectrum has been reserved for TV channels. The US government scheduled a forced switch of TV channels from analogue to digital signals currently scheduled for February which will have the effect of freeing up spectrum. In Februrary the TV channels will be relegated to the 470-698 Mhz rang. This leaves the 698-806 Mhz range free for new uses. Here is a good visual of this range and its breakdown by use. This newly freed range was further split up into 5 blocks A-D with various restrictions and the FCC had a nice little auction earning $19.592 billion without even selling block D. Canada by the way held a similar auction netting around 4.19 billion.

All this is nice and good except that the transition has not actually happened yet and now Obama is calling for it to be postponed. There are alot of issues here which I will only very briefly touch because I feel this post is too long already.

So why postpone the transition?

To watch DTV on an analogue TV you need a converter. To solve this the feds put $1.34 billion into a program to provide 40 dollar coupons for converters. Unfortunately this program has run out of money which has become the primary reason for postponement of the DTV transition. A quick froogle search shows the converters start around 15 dollars. I have a hard time seeing the need to postpone this long planned transition for lack of 40 dollar coupons for a 15 dollar device. Sure there are some people who will have a hard time coming up with the 15 dollars for the converter. Is this really the best use of our money to spend $1.34 billion on a subsidy for converter producers so that we can be less productive by watching TV.

An arstechnica article which inspired me to write this post discusses how there is alot more going on her than meets the eye. For starters by pushing back the long planned deadline we will be punishing every person and company who followed the rules and planned ahead not to mention the fact that we have already promised the freed spectrum to the auction winners. Beyond these obvious downsides, however, its important to realize that many companies are trying to develop nation wide broadband wireless networks. Two key companies here are Clearwire and Verizon. Clearwire has been attempting to setup a nationwide broadband wireless network for some time using 4g WiMAX technology, currently they are ahead but have met repeated delays and financial setbacks. Verizon has plans to build a 4g Long-Term Evolution technology for their similar nationwide broadband wireless network using the spectrum they bought for $9.4 billion in the FCC's auction. Verizon must wait until the spectrum is actually free. Whichever company attains critical mass first will in all likelihood become the defacto standard. A device will need a different antenna to use either network. This does not mean one device cannot have two antennas but it will raise price. By delaying the transition we are necessarily advantaging one company's initiatives over another.

The most interesting piece of this to me which reignited my interest in the whole issue is Gery Salemme. According to ars Gery is a former lobbyist and current executive vise president for strategy of Clearwire, who has repeatedly donated the maximum amount allowed to Obama and is apparently "acting as a key advisor to the Obama transition team on DTV issues" while using leave time from clearwire. This is not mentioned on change.gov or in an public statements. I would wait to hear more from other sources before getting too excited.

To sum all this up we have real wireless internet, not just with an inhome router or slow and expensive like current cellphones coming someday relatively soon! It does not appear to be the end of the world to delay the transition a few months but it does not look good for the US goverment. Mostly I will be interested in hearing more about Gery's involvement and seeing how Obama deals with the whole DTV transition.

next ill try and do something short and stupid again -> Over and Out