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Putting the TV Broadcast Spectrum to Better Use?

Posted by Cliff on from the replacing-the-traditional-'airwaves'-with-something-better dept.

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?"

3 of 772 comments (clear)

  1. Not everyone can afford cable.... by VirtualUK · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Not everyone can afford cable.... by mattsucks · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Nobody cares about these people, because they can't afford to donate to political campaigns.

      Same issue also applies to people (ie, me) who don't want to pay for cable/satellite. Anybody else think that selling off the public TV spectrum would be a sneaky way for the govt. to create a nice big new revenue stream for the big media providers? Maybe i'm just having a glass-is-half-empty day today....

  2. Re:Obviously... by robslimo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.