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Putting the TV Broadcast Spectrum to Better Use?
KoshClassic asks: "Recently, on the NPR show All Things Considered, an interview was broadcast with Thomas Hazlett, formerly the chief economist of the FCC. Although short on details, Mr. Hazlett raises the point that, with the high penetration rate of cable / satellite TV into American homes, broadcasting television over the air has (or soon will) become superfulous and that this portion of the radio spectrum could be better utilized for other purposes. What do Slashdot readers think of this idea and, for those who agree, what alternative uses of the broadcast spectrum would you like to see?"
what do the people who can't afford cable do then? For quite a lot of people who work on minumum wage/on welfare, etc., the minimum package cost of satellite or cable is still too expensive.
...but I wouldn't mind "broadcast" 802.x wireless internet service. Would this even be possible, though?
The bandwidth for TV stations when used digitally is something like 18MB/bs (can't exactly remember). You could use that bandwidth to stream movies/music to receivers. I was on a project that was doing just that, but we got axed. The infrastructure needed for VOD over TV isn't as great as for cable or Internet.
Like the 2.4Ghz ISM band for example. Keep the power levels low enough that it doesn't turn into one big interference mess, but high enough that you can actually cover some distance with it.
Load the airwaves with about 100 more NPR stations. I can't get enough of it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but europe is transitioning to digital TV as well, but when a station wants to broadcast in a DTV format, it has to eventually give up the VHF frequency it was using for a UHF one. This way, once completed, the entire VHF band will be free.
Who listens to AM radio anymore? Why not open that up to the public.
The group that gets hit the hardest are those that just don't watch that much TV. The cost of cable is prohibitive when you watch only an hour or so a month
As for the uneducated lazy asses on welfare who watch 500 or so hours of TV a month...they have cable. I suspect that the group that is least likely to have cable is the young professional working 80 hours a week, or students struggling to pay tuition, and who watch only a few hours a month.
Go down to the local trail park...yep...most have a satellite dish pointed to the great teet in the sky.
In fact the FCC has already decided sideband usage for DTV over broadcast waves, I am sure there are other unique uses in this band, especially if two way communication were eventually allowed. In fact DTV broadcasters will be able to squeeze a lot into a current "channel". I think I remember reading somewhere that four channels could be compressed into an existing one.
Truly the slicing and dicing of this spectrum is antiquated. We should be like the British and cut our ties with backwards compatability, like when they moved from B&W to Color.
What about heavy usage of UWB in that spectrum. I am not sure how far our TV signals travel in a low wattage scenario, but I am sure you could cram a lot into UWB that included this spectrum.
What about truly interative TV and or features? Maybe high grade digital audio?
There are 3 spectrums out there, and UHF is way underused. Lets get some more bang for the buck!
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
Sell it all to ClearChannel
Maybe, but if the FCC dude is right about the future of TV program distribution, ClearChannel won't want it. It might be great if some goes to Hams and other bits to commercial radio and unlicensed (low-power) data transmission (upper UHF freqs).
There are a couple of problems with it his idea/prediction, the most important is the shear momentum of the number of TV broadcasters and receivers using this part of the spectrum. Sure, over time the broadcasters could stop transmitting and broadcast only via cable, but that will take some time... and leave rural viewers out in the cold.
Second, with today's technology and demands for data transmission, there are some limitations to this part of the RF spectrum that might make it unattractive. With the longer wavelength (especially VHF as compared to new cell/mobile phones, 802.11x, etc in the GHz range), efficient transmitter/receiver antennae would probably be too large for most modern applications. Granted, in the upper UHF region, it gets better, but modern, high bandwidth data transmit/receive devices aren't using 1GHz and up just because of frequency allocation... there's beau-coup bandwidth to be had up there, without a lot of the terrestrial source interference issues that bug over-the-air TV viewing.
I wonder if we could use TVs and VCRs as packet sniffers if the spectrum gets converted to communications (al la cell phone) use... I would hardly call that dead :)
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Not saying we should get rid of tv broadcast, but I do think if we did, basic cable shouldn't be free.
OTA HDTV is nice. It's free, beyond the cost of the set box,
and on ebay, it's not much. No static or ghosts and I
don't have to pay $50 a month to DirecTV.
It's not a firehose of content, but it's enough.
As a vehicle to wrestle our American government away from corporate interests I would like to see it used for publicly funded, political discourse and campaigning. I think all debates, party presentations, platform, town hall meetings etc, should be available (and probably limited to) any of the parties through a publicly funded broadcast network. The point being that the money spent by political parties on access to the airwaves for campaigning is very tied to business interests due to the extremely high prices paid for access to that medium. It seems to me that removing a business interest from our country's political discourse would drastically help.
Well i live in the Washington DC area and dont want to pay $50/month for cable and am happy to get my "free" simpsons and PBS and evening news (local weather and news especially) with my rabbit ears. I'd hate to see an end to "free" TV.
It would be nice if i could get better quality news on cable but from what i have seen, the all-news-all -the-time channels are just as bad as the broadcast networks, just more of it. The local PBS station carries BBC news which is very slightly better than the American equivalent.
Let's be honest, neither you nor I can figure out the all of the wonderful ways that this spectrum might be used and then decide among them what is the best way it should be used.
Rather than setup a command economy for spectrum, let's put it out there as a common that people can use for various ideas with relatively low barriers to entry. For example, we have for the last several years been discussing how intelligent tuning, spreadspectrum, etc., make a myth of spectrum shortages. If this is the case, then let's put it to the test.
I propose that we let any "service provider" use this spectrum for a small registration fee and a small monthly rental payment (say on the order of 5% of revenues, which could be used for a number of purposes, including giving poor people cable if we decided that is the best way to spend it) for use of the spectrum, as long as they use a technology that 1) doesn't interfer with any other use of the spectrum using "intelligent tuning" technologies and 2) that doesn't demand exclusive use of the specturm in question.
What would this achieve? Well, it would give us a commons (where multiple service providers might exist) for creative us of this spectrum at the same that the people get to share in the benefits. By running multiple different applications of the spectrum, we would be able to determine what is the best use - in terms of demand - without looking out other miniority uses of the spectrum. Another cool thing about this plan, is that it could be rolled out over time. We could start by taking channels 3 and 4 off the air across the country (moving existing broadcasters to open holes that are no longer needed due to the improvments in transmission equipment since the advent of TV), see how it works. If over-the-air TV continues to be less and less important, then we could roll up more and more of the spectrum available for the "spectrum commons".
I am not going to pay for Satelite or Cable TV, just because I do not feel like paying for ADS. So until this llittle problem gets fixed the best way for me to get my TV is from the air-waves. Otherwise no TV for me.
To free up the broadcast TV spectrum (as we know it -- there may still be a market for a spectrum using a different technology) will take a long time, too. First, the FCC will have to go through a lengthy hearings process to decide whether or not to do it. If they do, expect a process something like this:
FCC opens up a new broadcast spectrum (maybe); sales of new-spectrum TV receivers begin
FCC stops issuing new licenses for the old spectrum
FCC bans sale of current old-spectrum licenses to other parties
Sales of old-spectrum TV sets are stopped
FCC sets date when all old-spectrum licenses expire
EPA goes into crisis mode when all of a sudden millions of TV's end up in landfills, setting off an ecological disaster
Government bans the disposal of old TV's ("You must keep them in your attic forever")
Wally Shumacher, janitor and garage tinkerer, invents new use for old TV's, saving the planet from destruction and making a few bucks in the process (before getting bought out by Microsoft)
Oops, got a little sidetracked there. Anyway, expect it to be a LOOOOOOOONG time before the broadcast spectrum as-we-know-it goes away.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Since technology (spread-spectrum, digital) now makes broadcasts of many more channels on these frequencies possible, and since broadcast TV is still the best way to get a consistent message out to a mass audience, and since we'd all like to keep elections from being decided by amount of airtime bought, I think it's time to reslice the pie.
Either chop up and sell the licences in smaller pieces for shorter terms, or sell them to broadcast "utilities" that themselves sell the ability to broadcast, but can not create or edit programming. (I'm sure such utilities would quickly discover how many channels they can slice their limited frequencies into!)
Toss in some regulations about not owning too many channels in one spot, and some about providing free air to public-interest programming, political candidates, private citizens, etc. and you've created a more diverse, more accessible, free version of cable.
Why would this matter to politics? Well, this could be a great chance to reform the rules as a whole new game is created. Maybe you could ban selling political ads, and give politicians free air time instead. Maybe you could even give parties their own little channels. Maybe, if you dealt with the ownership/licensing rules correctly, there would be a natural diversity and competition of ideas and viewpoints, and less political influence wielded by any particular media company.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
I have always thought the "turn off" date was total bullshit. Wait until Bubba finds out his TV gets turned off by the government next month, unless he buys a new multi hundred dollar box.
Congessional pages will be falling out of laps all over D.C.
In terms of a lot of the information (?) content, over-the-air, cable, and satellite bandwidth are all wasted. However, one isn't wasted more than another. I can give several reasons why it should be left alone:
1) Much of my home state is rural, and we aren't alone. There is no cable. If you want anything that looks like local information, it comes over the air.
2) Neither cable nor satellite are making more than a token effort towards HDTV or SDTV.
3) When I look at an off air SDTV station, it looks so much better than satellite, there's no comparison. That's particularly true on a wide screen set. I can't comment about how it might look on cable, because they (for the most part) haven't even bothered with SDTV.
4) In those instances I can recall in which the FCC reclaimed part of the broadcast spectrum, the replacement wasn't an improvement. The old 44 mHz FM broadcast band was given to mobile radio services, as was TV channel 1. When UHF channels 70-83 were taken away, they were replaced with cell phones.
Seriously, I use rabbit ears as well.
I have digital satellite, rabbit ears, and a dvd player connected to my 55" 16:9 Mitsubish HDTV.
Digital satellite provides limited HDTV programming and you have to pay anywhere from an extra $8/month to as high as $50/month. Additionally you have to put around $700 into your receiver to pick up the HDTV dish broadcast. Needless to say I currently don't receive HDTV from sattelite.
DVD looks great on the TV but it is no where near the quality of HDTV.
The rabbit ears currently provide 4 local channels in full 1080i HDTV. Much of the programming sucks, but the rabbit ears cost me $10. (the Mitsubishi has a built in HDTV tuner)
So until the dish, cable, and recorded media start to provide inexpensive HDTV content then the air waves must remain open to networks who are currently taking the lead in HDTV broadcasting.
burnin
Show me a poor person and I will show you somebody who watches a lot of cable.
This is absolutely true. I lived in a ghetto in Chile for a while, and people spent all of their discretionary money on alcohol, marijuana, or subscription television services. Dishes littered roofs that could barely support them.
well, maybe they will. Maybe sometime, those quaint country bumpkins who need to do something productive, will. Maybe they'll get hip,maybe they'll push just one more stupid thing like the endangered species act or the "no, you can't mine anymore" act,or the "no, sorry, your wood cutting business you've had for three hundred years is no longer allowed, there's a small bug that will get squashed" act, or one of the multitude of various rural ethnic cleansing actions you have been pushing. All the things that constantly keep bankrupting rural people, kicking them in the face, and stomping them when they are down. And don't whine about "farm subsisides", they go to the top few percent international corporate farmers and such other leeches, we don't have any use for those folks either, it has nothing to do with poor people struglling to make a living in the rural and small town areas where your "global free trade" has bankrupted people, driven up cost of living, put people out of work,even entire small towns, driven up taxes,lost homes and other property, and then to boot get to see on TV about how they are all illiterate hillbillies.
Here's a clue, they aren't. And they have long memories, and are able to do things and accomplish tasks that you can't even conceive of. And if you think your fat city pigs with their shiny shoes can do it for you, or those elite west point morons who are leading 75% rural kids,who know their folks back home and their neighbors are always being shafted by urban jerks will forget who owes what to whom, well, think again.
Maybe eventually the rural people of this nation, with maybe a little help from out of work manufacturing joes, and now the truckers who got shafted with nafta and gatt,and a few others, will band together, and just stop food deliveries into the cities with zero notice, and turn off the valves on the water pipes that carry THEIR water leading into YOUR overly expensive and oh so sophisticated elite cities, and stop coal deliveries, and halt oil deliveries, and watch all you clueless idiot rich urbanite scum who are so superior because you "make more money" turn cannibal, and as you pour out of the cities when you find out your artifical lifestyles have no basis in reality, you can become target practice for sport.
What goes around comes around pal, you're an example of a complete clueless jerk in a nation of clueless jerks who only think of themselves and revolve around a culture of greed and maximum profits exploitation. That was really a foul but most typical statement you made, so I hope you appreciate who actually holds the real critical priority cards in this nation if they get pushed hard enough. Your laquered head suits don't. Your think tank academics don't. Your media moguls don't. Your business buddies and doofuses at the country club don't. Your trophy wife don't. those people on the train next to you don't.
You need to get real man see what's what in treality, not your eloi fantasy land you live in. The pig english mass exploiters got kicked out of India, remember? The big difference is, the country people here have a few more toys and skills.
You need to know this, country people all over this nation are medium whizzed off lately with the dictates from urban idiot land, they are really quite angry getting the shaft constantly because they don't have any pull anymore at all, tired of being treated like some third world colony to be exploited by morons who couldn't change a spare on their own car withoput having the vapors and forming a committee about it, and they are real sick of being ripped off by people like you and your policies that your urban oriented legislatures keep pushing. You can shove your cable and videogames where the sun don't shine, and eat your cable tv, and drink your ridiculous "stock options", and wallow in your hollywood "entertainment" filth. And enjoy burning your expensive furniture in your sink in the winter, because here's another clue, your fuel doesn't come from high rise downtown elitist
Rabbit ears are a waste of money. Just take a ~10 meter long wire, run it in a circle around the room, and stick it in the hole in the coax jack. I'm watching the simpsons on one of those right now.
Yeah, I mean what use is there for free television? Poor people are so last year. I all seriousness, are you guys that excited to buy more gadgets that you would deny the public access to free public television?? This idea is disgusting
While I agree with what you're saying, American tv is considered by lots of non-americans to be just a proganda machine. While there are channels with some actual useful content, like perhaps PBS, the majority of american tv is controlled by, and used for the benefit of, the wealthy elite.
Perhaps a better idea might be restricting corporate access to sattelite or other means and giving the rest of the airways to public access and free media. Greater diversity in accessible media can help promote freedom and democracy; but this idea would still be dismissed. An informed populace can't help (and can only hinder) profits of corporate america, so it can't be allowed.
More to the point, current free access to 'useful' information in US television is minimal. So I do agree that removing what little access there is would hinder real democracy. But the current situation could still use a lot of improvement. And this certainly isn't restricted to US media, it is still far more pronounced and blatant in the US than anywhere else I've seen.
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
Not true.
The city of Tacoma, WA has done it. A few years ago they demonstrated that municipalities can enter into the media market by laying the fiber for their own Cable/Internet service, Click! Network, and go head to head with TCI/AT&T/Comcast. Click! was spawned after Tacoma citizens were so fed up with the lack of customer support by the private cable company and the city council got the approval to roll their own. And from what I understand, it has been quite successful. They did not even need to beg for customers to sign up.
It may seem that city governments are the only ones with deep enough pocketbooks (read, taxation) to do this. How many other cities have followed suit? Surely not the smaller ones.
On the other hand, in more remote places like Eastern Idaho from what I understand, CableONE is piping their cable service wirelessly to some customers who don't live in populated areas where the RG-6 is cheaper to lay. This may cost more of a premium for the equipment but I doubt the customers are unhappy.
>TV broadcasters are using the spectrum that belongs to the US taxpayers, and arent paying a cent to do so
What the heck are you smoking? I'd like to sample it sometime when I've got a week to recover my sanity.
While we are undoubtedly getting a very large discount on a 6 mhz wide hunk of spectrum, let me assure you that by the time the legal beagles add on their fees in addition to the fcc re-newall fees, our 'license to broadcast' is far from free, and will probably pay your salary rather comfortably for multiple months.
--
Cheers, Gene
First off - Over The Air broadcasting is going nowhere. Period. Your local affiliates will exist well into the future. We need local news and local TV competition... and as much as some affiliates suck, they're absolutely necessary.
Now, what about idle TV spectrum? Metro and/or Suburban Area Networking. Meshed, fast(?) bla bla bla. I'm no technical genius, and I'm sure that a good protocol for this doesn't even exist, but remember, 802.11x didn't exist several years ago. At any rate, Make it commercial. Make it public/free. Do both. Do whatever is needed to make it happen. It'll never be a replacement for fiber to the home, but maybe it'll allow for the holy grail of telecom competition... wireless VoIP. Even better, maybe it'll allow everyone to have a small chunk of bandwidth out in BFE rural areas. Who knows. At any rate, something is better than nothing, which is what is going on with the majority of TV spectrum.
Finally - "3G" radio. Satellite radio isn't local which IMHO is its only drawback. Current regulations and standards for AM/FM need to be updated for more efficient use of spectrum. But fuck it. Lets just go all out and make an FM2 or something. Yes, I know there is a technology in the works to "digitize" local radio, but they're going about it in a legacy-supporting way. By going about an upgrade in this manner, the FCC is preventing smaller players from going live. UHF was over-allotted sand box, and FM is an overcrowded ClearChannel clusterfuck... and the FCC needs to fix it... starting over from scratch. Hell, let ClearChannel keep FM... but give us another way to broadcast and receive local content... digitally. "FM2" should have about 100 medium-power channels for everyone to use... requiring an FCC permit, but unlike AM/FM, it should have very low or nonexistent broadcaster fees. It should be what LPFM strived to do, only much better.
Of course, if we had a good Continental Area Network (ho ho!!) we could just use that to power 3G radio. But I think I've already shot at the stars at it is.