700 MHz Auction Begins Tomorrow

necro81 writes "On Thursday, after much speculation and wrangling, the FCC will begin auctioning licenses to the coveted 700 MHz band that will be vacated by analog TV in 2009. The NY Times has a good summary of the players (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Google, et al.), how the auction will work, how Google has already scored an open networks victory, and what it could all mean for consumers. The auction will go on for several months, but you can keep tabs on the bids at this FCC site."

Comments

Re:When did it go from public to private

[Anonymous Coward]

In 2009 you will be able to set up your ol' rabbit ears (and your 50$ converter box) and it will just work...still. They are just shifting from analog to digital, which frees up part of the frequency band. No on stole anything from you. You didn't own it in the first place, calm down. ... freakin commies xD

Re:When did it go from public to private

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between broadcasting on a band and listening on the band. We, the people, never had the ability to broadcast on the 700MHz band all willy-nilly.

The gov isn't selling off anything that belongs to people. It was licensed to TV broadcast networks, not residents.

Auction 73

[lart2150]

for those who are looking for the auction it's number 73 on the fcc website.

Re:Auction 73

[markov_chain]

Here is also a more direct link: Auction 73

Re:Where does the money go?

[Ironsides]

The money will go into the general fund. A.K.A. the same place income taxes go to.

It's always been private

[mstahl]

I think you're confusing transmitting and receiving. You can receive on whatever frequencies you care to. Swap out a few parts to an old ham radio receiver and it will totally pick up 700MHz band and you can listen to your heart's content.

Transmitting is a different story though. Even public radio stations have to pay (albeit less than commercial radio stations) in order to broadcast and they are assigned a unique frequency on which to do so.

Re:Where does the money go?

[Detritus]

It goes into the General Fund, just like all taxes, duties, fines, etc. Only Congress has the power to appropriate money from the General Fund. Federal agencies and departments don't get to keep any of the money that they receive from external sources. It all goes into the General Fund.

Re:Big businesses win, we lose!

[The One and Only]

I would like to begin my reply by imploring you to use linguistic features like "paragraphs" to organize your thoughts so that they are easier to read.

The airwaves should not even be owned but licenced

As the article summary notes:

... the FCC will begin auctioning licenses to the coveted 700 MHz band...

As for the rest of your comment, it is as poorly thought out as it is written and organized.

Re:When did it go from public to private

[compro01]

you can apply for the (2) $40 coupons (usable towards the cost (prediced at about $60, so you need to pay about $20 each box) of 1 DTV converter each) here.

Re:Impact on wireless audio gear in UHF 66-69 rang

[JesseMcDonald]

You're assuming the systems are symmetric. It's more likely that the official licensees will have a far stronger transmitters than the ones in wireless microphones. The microphones won't interfere significantly with the licensees, but any licensee operating in that part of the spectrum will probably drown out wireless microphones over a fairly large area. Moreover, transmitters based on the "white space" detection that's been discussed recently would probably fail to detect such low-power signals and transmit right over them.