FCC Broadband Staffer Seeks TV Response to Low-Power Plan
The TV industry could best help the FCC craft a spectrum proposal in the National Broadband Plan by providing a wide array of information including the industry’s response to several plans for low-power stations, a commission broadband official told us. A proposal from CEA and CTIA, which they say will free up as much as 180 MHz of spectrum by having broadcasters use lower-power and gear similar to cell sites and technology from CTB Group (CD Dec 24 p1) for low-power broadband, was mentioned by Scenario Planning Director Phil Bellaria of the National Broadband Task Force. He oversees the commission’s broadcast spectrum reclamation efforts.
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“I would love to get responses from broadcasters to those relatively new ideas,” Bellaria said Friday. “We'd love to figure out a way where broadcasters can continue to use 120 MHz of spectrum but the 174 remaining could be used for something other than separation between stations,” he said of TV use of radio waves in the top-10 U.S. markets. “We'd love comments from broadcasters on whether they think that’s feasible” since the distributed technology system in the CEA-CTIA plan “has traditionally been thought of as more of a gap filler for coverage.” Several broadcast industry lawyers agreed with that assessment, citing the technology’s cost and technical limitations.
Broadcasters and the FCC broadband staffers continued to disagree (CD Dec 2 p1) last week whether the agency is giving industry all the information it needs to fully participate in the broadband plan and especially spectrum reallocation efforts. Industry representatives contend they need more concrete information from the commission, such as the amount of spectrum being sought, to more fully comment. The FCC continues to hold productive meetings with broadcasters where much information is exchanged, Bellaria said. FCC members aren’t closely participating in spectrum reallocation decision making because most of the work is still being done at the staff level, said another commission official.
The public notice issued last week giving parties until Jan. 27 to provide additional comments on the plan (CD Jan 13 p14) hopefully will garner more broadcast industry responses on spectrum, Bellaria said. He also hopes for filings on the so-called gateway TV device that can be used across subscription-video providers. “We've gotten some specific comments from some of the public interest groups” including Free Press on that issue and also from TiVo, he said. “I think we'd love input from both the operators and others in the industry on those specific proposals.”
“Our perspective throughout has been the more information the better and the earlier the better, because we're operating under a tight time line,” Bellaria said. That includes econometric studies such as one NAB is said by industry officials to have commissioned but not released, he added. “I don’t think it’s to anyone’s advantage to hold anything back for a later date if that information is available now. … The only thing that’s not helpful is repeating comments that have been submitted. Anything else is extremely helpful -- whether it be economic, technical, business-model related.”
“We're going to be submitting our comments to the FCC, you can be sure of that,” an NAB spokesman said. “It’s in our best interests to provide all the data that supports our position for continuing a robust free over-the-air television system.” For the industry, “the very future of broadcasting hinges on whatever actions policymakers could take as a result of these proposals,” he added. “It is difficult for us to comment on a plan that we haven’t seen. We support expanding broadband to unserved homes. We don’t think that has to come at the expense of jeopardizing all the promises of digital television to over-the-air TV households, who I would note are predominately the same people who have been at risk over the digital divide issue.”
Bellaria said TV stations could each decide whether they wanted to give up some spectrum, under one scenario being examined, and that the broadband staff hope any solution gets support from the industry. Voluntary or not, broadcasters can’t make an informed judgment now without more information from those staffers, said President David Donovan of the Association for Maximum Service Television. “To the extent the task force has not made what its plan is public, it is difficult to engage in a rational dialogue if you don’t know what the plan is. And statements to date certainly do not guarantee that this will be solely a voluntary program.”
“Do you know what their plan is? Does anybody with the proposals?” Donovan asked. “It’s certainly not transparent to us. If the latest position by the broadband task force is this is only going to be voluntary, if broadcasters are only exaggerating the problem, the easiest response would be for them to tell us what their proposal is so we can evaluate” it. Bellaria responded that the point of the plan is to arrive at a proposal when the broadband task force’s work is put into a report and given to Congress, not to be constantly previewing the plan for industry.
“I'm not sure I understand the frustration -- I feel like we've had very positive, engaging dialogue with broadcasters throughout this process, and that’s been very helpful for us, and hopefully for them, to understand what we're thinking and why,” Bellaria continued. “So maybe there’s a difference between the public dialogue and the more productive ongoing daily dialogues. … When we come out with a plan, I think we will have a perspective on how much spectrum is required to meet growing demand for wireless data usage in that spectrum will come from multiple sources, but if a voluntary mechanism doesn’t provide enough spectrum in conjunction with all the other sources then the FCC may need to pursue other alternatives,” Bellaria said. “If we're able to establish a voluntary market-based mechanism where each station owner has a choice with what that broadcaster wants to do with his spectrum license, it feels like that’s a hard thing to impose. Because at the end of the day they could just choose to keep the status quo” and keep using the entire 6 MHz of spectrum.
The FCC has kept its cards close to its vest on the issue, but broadcasters are fretting too much about what will be a report to Congress and not a mandate, an industry executive said. If the NAB doesn’t file its economic study in response to the public notice, it would be a tactical decision to wait longer before unveiling it, said an industry lawyer. The lawyer and executive agreed that the TV industry continues to be concerned about the high cost and technical limitations of the distributed transmission systems sought by CEA and CTIA.
CEA also hopes broadcasters will use the additional comment period to discuss that proposal, Jamie Hedlund said on his last day as vice president of the group before moving to ICANN. “There are some engineering issues that would need to be sorted through and clarified to make this work. Based on the information that we have that we've submitted in the record we think it could be a compelling idea … a win for broadcasters and a win for mobile DTV.” Of the FCC broadband staff, “I'm not at all surprised that they have not proposed a concrete plan to the broadcasters before they submit their report to Congress,” he said. “There would have to be rules to require the broadcasters to move, but it’s our hope the broadcasters will see they actually benefit from this plan and, assuming all the engineering is correct and it works, that even with rules they would voluntarily go along with it.”