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FCC Postpones Spectrum Auction Until 2016
An anonymous reader writes: 2014 was supposed to be the year broadcasters would be allowed to sell off their unused spectrum to mobile carriers. That got pushed back to 2015 in December, and now the Federal Communications Commission has bumped it to 2016 in the face of a lawsuit from the National Association of Broadcasters. The FCC says the legal briefs aren't even due until January 2015, and it will take them until the middle of the year to review the documents and respond in court. The delay is just fine with the NAB, but probably bad news for anyone hoping that spectrum would help to improve mobile communications in the U.S. any time soon.
The "spectrum" the Govt wants to auction is "found" by "repacking" the remaining TV over the air broadcasters. Among the great idea are multiple stations using one channel (So we get two crappy streams on one frequency instead of the pretty HDTV we were promised) and other stations going back to VHF-Lo (RF channels 2-5) which don't work all that well without big antennas and have issues with interference and digital. The NAB is unhappy because the "re pack" means that many stations will lose broadcast area. If you are a cable co, or a broadband provider, OF COURSE you will want to do anything you can to cripple the "cut the cord" folks....you can't ban OTA broadcast, but you can cripple it. There is debate as to how much money the broadcasters will get in compensation, but there clearly isn't anyone looking out for the OTA viewer. I like some broadband too but this is the new titan fighting the old titan...