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.'"

Comments

Sounds like Bull to me

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

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?

Re:Sounds like Bull to me

[SuperQ]

True, a lot of wide bandwidth data will raise the noise floor in the spectrum, but the power limits for this "unused" spectrum will be in the milliwatt range.. DTV stations transmit in tens to hundreds of kilowatts. A lot of what hams are using the HF range for is fairly weak signal compared to what DTV stations are using. The max power a single ham station can use is 1500 watts.. most are only 100 watts tho.

This is besides the fact that the FCC rules for this spectrum use dictate that stations must detect DTV and notch their TX out of any DTV in the air.

Re:If broadcasts are so critical, how come....

[Anonymous Coward]

They fuck up football all the time. Everyone is just so used to it, people rarely notice. One such fuck up is even an iconic NFL game. The so called Heidi game. Which was a catastrophic fuck up by broadcasters. Then there are cable companies, and then TNT which apparently can't figure out how to operate a HD channel. Hint motherfuckers, stretching a standard format standard definition interlaced picture to widescreen 720p makes people want to vomit. I'm surprised it hasn't killed someone.

TV quality

[maniac/dev/null]

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?

Re:TV quality

[antdude]

Wipe out entirely? Are you nuts? I don't want to subscribe to cable, satellite, etc. I like OTA since it's free, and its HDTV is higher quality and satellite and cable from what I read.

Oh Yea??

[snowraver1]

'While our friends at Intel, Google and Microsoft may find system errors, computer glitches and dropped calls tolerable, broadcasters do not.'"

I would bet dollars to doughnuts that google has a higher uptime then their tv station. How many times have you been watching the TV and there is dead air for like 30 secs? How about watching a news broadcast and one of the mics isn't turned on. But more closely related to the article, I'm sure that the Broadcasters would oppose this even if it didn't screw with thier signals at all. Noone solely boradcasts anymore, they also sell thier service to cable companies and satellite. The cable company doesn't want a free wireless setup to compete with thier current duopoly. Therefore it is in the intrest of the broadcaster to help the cable company do well so it buys it's product.

This just in...

[symbolset]

Cable companies also oppose municipal fiber internet.

Cry me a river. You had your chance to help. Now get out of the way.

How Push is a Waste.

[Erris]

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.

... it would need a powerful, expensive transmitter.

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.

It is bull, here is why:

[Gary W. Longsine]

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.

Re:If broadcasts are so critical, how come....

[MS-06FZ]

Hm, interesting...

A problem with the lossy compression, perhaps? It's easy to provide a good picture when there's not much going on - it's harder to be consistent when movement (on and across the field, in the stands in the background, etc.) peaks...

It could also be that your reception is marginally bad - to the point that your set is receiving enough information during those low-bandwidth moments that it can pick out a reasonable amount of data - but when the data requirements for the signal go up, redundancy in the signal goes down and you don't get quite enough data for the level of activity in the picture...

I honestly don't know enough about HDTV broadcast to say that's how it works, but it seems sensible...