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Broadcasters Oppose Wireless Net Service
kaufmanmoore writes "The AP reports that the National Association of Broadcasters is launching ads to target lawmakers over a push by a consortium of technology companies including Google, Intel, HP, and MSFT who want to use unused and unlicensed TV spectrum (the so-called 'white space') for wireless broadband. Broadcasters are airing concerns about the devices creating interference with broadcast television. In a statement, NAB chairman Alan Frank takes a swipe at technology companies: 'While our friends at Intel, Google and Microsoft may find system errors, computer glitches and dropped calls tolerable, broadcasters do not.'"
During the football (that's football, not soccer) season games are played every week with running commentary and everything runs just fine.
Then the SuperBowl comes along and everything turns glitchy.
How come broadcasters who think they are the end-all and be-all of reliability can't get this most important of games broadcast without problems?
What do the broadcasters have against this proposal REALLY. They don't honestly think that this will cause interference. What is really in it for them for opposing this? Working with the Telcos now?
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Cry me a river, broadcasters. Communications legislation in America crazy-favors the local broadcaster and cable companies (See SHVA/SHVERA). This is just more "I don't wanna do anything new" rhetoric from these whiny network affiliates.
Considering the garbage that these TV companies put on the air waves, I wouldn't mind if OTA television was wiped out entirely. Hell, if the old TV stations still own the licenses on the spectrum, why not convert to wireless TVoIP business models?
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So who here has never seen the "Please Stand By" colorbars of death in the middle of the broadcast of their favorite show?
Mr. Broadcaster,
I'd prefer more bandwidth over more TV any day. Many (if not most) of us have cable or satellite now anyway, so you're being marginalized whether you like it or not. Don't pretend that our attempts to distribute more bandwidth to home are what causes your falling profits and "glitches". Wake up - the world is digital, and it's on-demand.
"Gosh, Dad...it looks like we're the first family in the neighborhood to have a TV antenna on our roof!"
...........later, after the family has had their dinner, and Alan's mother finishes washing the dishes, little Alan sits down in front of the Frank family's new Westinghouse 14" ChromaColor television while his father finishes connecting the also new roof aerial to the back of the glowing set.
"Right, Alan - this is the newest thing. Now we can pull in another 4 channels, and one of them is supposed to be showing at least an hour of VibraColor every Friday!"
"While our neighbors may find it easy to put up with ghosting, rolling images and static..." Mr. Frank said to Alan, "...the Franks do not. One day, Son, everyone will enjoy color TV the way it was meant to be. Why, I bet they'll have at least twenty channels fifty years from now. Imagine!"
"And since you're sitting right in front of it, flip the channel to six, Alan...careful - clockwise! Boxing starts in ten minutes! Marge - is that cake ready, yet? All this work & I'm still hungry!."
I think it's much more likely that the broadcasters are concerned for one of two reasons:
1) This will give the various companies straight bandwidth to use for pushing their own video content, which has better supported advertising due to targeted ads (you can actually track who sees the ads, and target ads based on content).
2) The various companies listed might put out devices that would act like a rabbit ears for the internet- cable "websites" beamed directly to a box piped to a user's television, only on a more local basis. You don't have direct control over what is currently playing on a certain channel, but the variety of channels is larger. (Just think- a channel with nothing but one show 24/7.)
1 is more likely, but 2 would be cool.
Allowing others to make use of the white-spaces will create plenty of interference. Because any type of new communication or service will become and indirect competitor, and thus interfer with the broadcasters market and bottom-line.
Satellite and cable are how people get their TV fix nowadays because of the variety and quality of signal. Plus the fed are going to force everyone to go digital come 2009.
Cable companies also oppose municipal fiber internet.
Cry me a river. You had your chance to help. Now get out of the way.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
An average Subway Franchise makes more money in a day than airwave TV makes in a month off of ad revenues. And it's not like a nationwide broadband wireless standard that can leverage off of existing infrastructure would help the economy or anything.
Broadcast Glitch? There have been plenty but the next one can be permanent for all I care. Broadcast and all push media is a waste of spectrum, unable to deliver what users actually want like pull media can.
As a side note, someone who does not know the difference between M$ and Google reliability has to be a M$ user.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
When the scheduling doesn't match the shows, sports games cut in, a program is cut mid-sentence for the much more important commercial brake, the emergency broadcast system cuts in... and I don't even *own* a television set!
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
I am running for President of the US on MySpace. Vote for me.
My main thrust is lobbiests, they need to go away. The only
lobbies that should exist are those that we all may find ourselves
in, like the lobby for the aged or for the infirm(handicapped).
All the rest need to be outlawed. Period.
I would re-instate the original FCC charter with minor mods to
take into account the technilogical changes that have happened
since the 1900's. I would make the field level for all, and discount
monied interests nearly 100 percent.
Vote for Zoomshorts !!!
Plus I have some really cool fachist(sp) leanings too.
When politicials are talking, they are lying. I lie daily!
You all should feel right at home.
Technical Difficulties.
Actually my Internet is far more reliable than my local broadcast stations.
Minimum standards for television receiver quality could limit the amount of interference from devices that use white-space. Unfortunately, the FCC doesn't seem to be interested in the subject. They did set standards for UHF tuners back when it was new technology and the commercial viability of UHF broadcasting was threatened by the poor quality of most UHF tuners.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
the mandate that "over the air" television will be gone in another year or so? then what will the complaint be?
The broadcasters are suggesting what? That the service, including all the RF stuff, will be implemented and maintained by a group of undergraduated nerdy 16yo teenagers who happen to know bash scripting?
Gimme a break...
a broadcast TV station that can reach a half a million homes, with a few thousand TVs tuned in at any given time. How could "pull" save any spectrum?
Because half a million people don't want to watch 99% of what's broadcast, broadcast is 99% waste. People put up with "I Love Lucy" when there was nothing else. Pull gives people the power to watch what they want, when they want so it can be 100% efficient.
"pull" would be completely impractical for TV and radio broadcasts over-the-air - how would the TV request a particular channel?
The same way you watch YouTube in a coffee shop or on your iPhone. Well, you might want to P2P it out through a mesh or cell system, but the previous examples should demonstrate to you that it's easy enough.
I can't imagine anything more expensive and wasteful than the $500,000 broadcasting license the FCC charges to allow people to pollute precious public spectrum with megawatts worth of "I Love Lucy". The principle is general regardless of media - push is wasteful, pull is better.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Anything the broadcasters can do, a packet network can do better. A new wireless broadband network which spanned the country threatens to not only provide entirely new services which could beam a Star Trek like future right into your pocket, but also to slurp the last bit of creme from their audiences. The broadcasters know they are not innovative enough to survive a technology revolution like this. They will be relegated to milking the declining revenue streams from their aging content libraries, until, finally, they are no longer relevant and have no influence. They will be bought by Google or some upstart that hasn't been founded yet.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
People in the US still watch over-the-air broadcast television?
Where I live, in a large town, but not in a huge city with signal-obstructing buildings, broadcast TV is unwatchable. And basic cable (local channels + CNN and a handful of other cable channels) is like $8/month.
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"While our friends at Intel, Google and Microsoft may find system errors, computer glitches and dropped calls tolerable, broadcasters do not."
I find that statement by these old curmudgeons and stalwarts offensive and I don't work for any of these companies.
I do however have cable internet and digital cable television (Comcast) and it is extremely glitchy, both the internet service and the TV. The TV service momentarily blinks out and pixelates about 10 times per day on average and sometimes worse. Quite often I get loud blasts of a split second static. These glitches are incredibly annoying if you are watching a movie and take you out of the experience.
The cable internet I have is one of their premium packages and though it is very fast it blinks out about once a week or so and I regularly have strange bouts of extremely slow speeds.
I can't help but think that a company like Google could do a better job of providing these services if they were so inclined. NAB is all about protecting their business interests by any means necessary. They've done their best to fight satellite radio: http://www.orbitcast.com/archives/the-nab-a-history-of-hypocrisy.html. The unfortunate thing is these guys have deep pockets and (which they buy their friends in Congress with) and influence policy without any concern of the common good of the people. These are OUR radio waves right? We employ the government to mange the airways to suit our interests right? Well at least that was the the idea...
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
... watch broadcast TV. The voters that matter have all got cable.
Of course this will go through.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
Just a thought, maybe it's because the initial demo by those companies created plenty of interference? It's easy to take a jab at the broadcasters, but I'd be worried there too. Yes, it can be designed to minimize interference, but I too would first like to see the model which indeed does that.
Then those companies said, basically, "yeah, well, you should ignore that 'cause the device was just deffective." Well, then show me the model which isn't. Also, did they test it? If they can't take a demo to the FCC seriously enough to have a fully tested prototype, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence... yet.
Also show me that you've fixed that mode of failure. If a device can just fail in a mode that jams two adjacent TV channels, I'd worry too.
To give an example from another wave band and type, imagine that a disco opens across the road from your house. Yes, it can be soundproofed to hell and back, but I'd like them to do that first, not just remain at the "it could be done" stage. If the first test could be heard from a mile, dunno about you, I'd probably be at the head of the medieval mob with torches and pitchforks trying to get them out of town.
And, honestly, the computer-related companies _do_ have a track record of pushing unsafe or untested stuff out the door. Tell anyone who's seen a Windows computer get pwned in 10 minutes flat after connecting to the internet that they should _totally_ trust MS to have their broadcasting equipment fail-safe.
Google is any better only because they stuck to the "but it's only a beta!" defense for how many years now? In any other tech company, going productive with a beta would be called irresponsible. My boss would probably have my head for lunch if I told him "it's just a beta" about a version that got deployed.
At any rate, it's again a culture that doesn't inspire confidence when it comes to other domains. If they can run their search engine as a beta and tweak it as it goes, more power to them, but it's not a model I'd want in something that broadcasts stuff. Or generally in anything that involves a physical product. If their page rank algorithm fails it's just a "teh oops" moment, and they'll tweak it some more again. If such a broadcasting device fails, it jams two adjacent TV stations. It's just not the same thing.
Heck, even in software it becomes an unworkable model if you move out of the free-services-over-the-net arena. If you shipped an OS by the "it's just a beta" philosophy, you'd probably do worse than even MS. Remember, MS at least has the policy of never shipping with known bugs. But even just the unknown ones caused the pwnage-fest when connected to the Internet. Now imagine it shipped as a beta.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Ancient Technology impeding new technology and the market via the government. So much for U.S. capitalism eh? I'm still wondering why I have to "record" shows that I want to watch on a tv instead of just watching them whenever the hell I want by going to a website. Ads work just as well online as they do in the middle of my damned show.
Where I live, in a large town, but not in a huge city with signal-obstructing buildings, broadcast TV is unwatchable. And basic cable (local channels + CNN and a handful of other cable channels) is like $8/month.
I agree with you on the unwatchable part, but where I live basic cable is some $30/month.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Broadcasters can whine about this and try to convince lawmakers (most of whom are tech-dumb lawyers) that this is all about protecting the radio frequency spectrum, but this is BUNK, Just as the FCC claims its regulation of computers is about protecting the spectrum is also BUNK.
If the FCC was REALLY about protecting the spectrum, then they would require some of the worst RF noise emitters (electric razors, light dimmers, lawnmowers, etc.) to be certified. There is a lot of money and prestige in regulating computer technology and none in regulating cheap low-tech devices. As long as they regulate important whizz-bang things like TV, radio, and computers, congress sees reasons to fund them at current levels. If they were the regulators of razors and light dimmers they might have less respect and lower budgets.
Similarly, the broadcasters are not worried about the spectrum (which sounds important and high-tech); This is about trying to keep from losing even more viewers (and the associated ad and/or subscriber revenue). Everybody knows that younger people are getting more of their entertainment from interactive web-based sources (news from the web, online games, etc) and this trend will likely SKYROCKET if low-cost high-speed net access becomes too available. Any roadblock they can throw-up will help hold back the tidal wave of losses.
Watch-out whenever somebody tells you that he, like some knight in shiny armor, is a defender-of-the-spectrum, (defender of the faith... protector of the realm... ) and all that stands between you and electromagnetic chaos. If he has a financial interest in the outcome then he probably is in it for the cash.
1. NAB opposes [anything new].
2. TV studios oppose {anything new].
3. RIAA opposes [anything new].
4. Music studios oppose [anything new].
5. MPAA opposes [anything new].
6. Movie studios oppose [anything new].
7. FCC [still hasn't got a clue]
Nothing new under the Sun, I guess.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
"While our friends at Intel, Google and Microsoft may find system errors, computer glitches and dropped calls tolerable, broadcasters do not."
I'd hate it if broadcast television started dropping calls. Hmmm.
Everybody knows that younger people are getting more of their entertainment from interactive web-based sources (news from the web, online games, etc)
:)
I love getting lumped in with "younger people" like that. Makes me feel like a kid again.
Perhaps it's because I don't watch sports (I can't stand ESPN-culture), but there are MAYBE five or six television programs that I ever find myself watching. In fact, if it weren't for DVR, I don't thing I would ever turn my TV on unless it was to play a video game. In fact, I went about six months last year without cable. Compare that to my internet habits. I check Google News, Digg, and Slashdot daily and I have 19 podcasts, which I avidly keep up with.
If you can't find interesting, updated content on the web, you aren't looking hard enough.
-Grym
you're right it's bull - i thought the fcc is forcing an end to analogue broadcast tv , precisely because the more-efficient digital broadcasting enables better use of the spectrum (= more use / variety)? it will interfere to the extent that it gets in the way of their own use of the extra space.
Same as their complaints about low-power broadcasters in the 70s. Really, guys, you need a fresh pick-up line.
Thank you! We need to wipe out all the broadcasters and use the spectrum for the internet. Then you can let people "broadcast" their shows over the internet that would then blanket 100% of the US.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
While our friends at Intel, Google and Microsoft may like an environment
in which consumers are free to decide what to watch, when and where to watch it,
broadcasters do not.
Of course, they don't realize that their own wording is really true, albeit not the way they intend it to be.
The real 'interference' that high-speed wireless Internet represents is _competitive_ interference, as fewer people feel the need to sit and drool watching the ads on the 'boob tube', and more choose other means of entertainment.
Even on the cable/FiOS networks, and switch to "switched" (or packet) video entirely.
Think of it this way; how many hours of the content that is streamed out to the population actually gets watched, versus the number of hours pumped onto the airwaves, or into cable/fiber networks?
On Comcast, I get 20+ HD channels, 200+ regular channels, with the bandwidth of ONE regular (non-digital) channel allocated to my ENTIRE NODE for internet access (50-400 people, give or take).
If all those channels were allocated to data, with packet video streaming through the node, there would be much more room for everything.
It's the same with the airwaves.
Change _everything_ over to MPEG4, make everything packet based, and watch the available bandwidth skyrocket. It's not like the FCC isn't already forcing everyone to change their analog TVs to digital TVs. And it's not even gov't interference in the market; spectrum allocation is already done entirely by the government, and is currently monopolized by regional players.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I am afraid I actually agree with him.
Background: As an ex telecommunications engineer I know about reliability; as a radio ham I know about interference.
With that background, I am afraid it seems to me that he may have a good point that some industries tolerate failure (Vista bluescreens on me several times a month), while others do not - your (wired) phone, for instance, always works. A public telehpone switch or a TV transmitted do not need "reboots" - a reboot of a phone switch can take hours, so it is engineered to not need them.
So while there is a legitimate question about the validity of broadcasting TV, the fundamental point, that while it exists interference should not be tolerated, is valid. It took decades to get to reliable TV transmission, and that can all bre broken very quickly.
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
"While our friends at Intel, Google and Microsoft may find system errors, computer glitches and dropped calls tolerable, broadcasters do not."
This will change pretty soon as "our friends" get into the broadcasting business, which might be the best option to extend reliable broadcasting technologies. The change most certainly won't come from the broadcasters who should probably get ready to tolerate re-defining the term broadcasting and the competition of new bread of broadcasters.
Other complaints along the same lines:
Commuters object to removing road lanes for light rail. "Too dangerous," they say.
Microsoft objects to people buying non-Microsoft-base computers. "Fear for future of internet," they suggest.
Some corporation objects to someone using something they could have used themselves. "Scary consequences," they insist.
YAAAAWWWNNN! THIS IS NOT NEWS.
Since signal quality is so important to him, Mr. Frank is welcome to come over and fine tune the bunny ears on my tv at his earliest convenience.
BTW, my way of limiting TV viewing is to use bunny ears on an HDTV (analog signal, not digital). Fewer channels and you've really got to want to see a show to put up with warped high resolution static. But if Mr. Frank can pull in "Heroes" a bit better, I'd appreciate it.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
if the Alan Frank you stated is the same Alan Frank I know in this biz, the NAB is heading down a bad road. Alan Frank is one phenomenal jerkoff
isn't tv supposed to all digital, and out of this part of the spectrum by then? so why will there be any interference? who gets tv over the air anymore, anyway?
According to Star Trek history, television ended around the mid-21st century. Once wireless Internet is as ubiquitous as television signals, it's only a matter of time until people simply get bored of the traditional television model and completely abandon it for the Internet. It is this inevitable future that the broadcasters fear.
Face it, broadast, for about 80-90 years, was a license to print money. Now it's obsolete except for live events. We need downloads and interactivity. The hell with broadcast.