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Spectrum Wars: The Hidden Battle

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the pretty-soon-we-are-talking-about-real-money dept.

PacketMaster writes: "The USA Today is carrying an interesting commentary entitled All-but-secret battle rages over fate of airwaves. The article sheds light on some topics that many people are completely ignorant on - the fight over the broadcast spectrum. The most interesting tidbit is that the current broadcasters, who were given the new digital spectrum for applications like HDTV for free, now want to keep their old ones too and auction them off for industry profit to help pay for the transition to the new spectrum."

3 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Maybe I'm missing something, but... by LordNimon · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Or are they just inefficiently allocated or something?

    You think?

    The rest of the world waits until the U.S. is finished making the mistakes that often come when a new technology is introduced. The problem is that once we realize we've made mistakes, our "solution" is to patch things up, not throw the whole thing out and start over. In the meantime, the rest of the world says, "Ok, the U.S. has invented this technology and discovered some of the problems. Now how can we implement it correctly?"

    --
    And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
    To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
  2. It's TV by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The US gives a lot of spectrum to TV (and the military, but that's another story). So, Americans are behind in cell phone technology, but get to watch more TV channels (even without cable).Network Magazine has an interesting article about this.

  3. Eben Moglen talked about this 4 years ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Eben Moglen (Prof. at Columbia Univ. and General Counsel for the FSF) was talking about the spectrum giveaway to TV broadcasters 4 years ago. See here. Interesting historical perspective.