TV Spectrum Overlay Plan Gets No Wireless Takers, Adds Some Broadcasters

None of the other broadcasters we polled, which own about 250 stations total or 18 percent of all commercial U.S. stations, had any comment on the coalition. It wants low- and full-power TV stations to deliver one-way Internet Protocol traffic including streaming video to wireless users, saving the carriers from having to use their spectrum to deliver such broadband content. The CTIA instead wants Congress to pass legislation that would let the FCC voluntarily auction the frequencies of broadcasters who decide to participate, giving some of the proceeds to them. That the NAB backs such auctions if they hold harmless all stations who don’t opt to participate is one reason more broadcasters aren’t backing the coalition, said broadcasters including Sinclair Vice President Mark Aitken. The owner or provider of services to 65 stations is the largest full-power broadcaster to back the broadband and TV coalition.

Gray TV, operating 36 stations, has “verbally committed” to joining, Aitken said. He said Capitol Broadcasting, with the North Carolina outlets, has agreed to join. Capitol CEO Jim Goodmon has been a longtime proponent of the FCC letting TV stations use standards such as OFDM and other than the Advanced TV Systems Committee’s ATSC A/53 and A/153, the only ones currently permitted, to deliver broadband and other services (CD March 14 p5). Goodmon had no comment. “An OFDM schema is a step in the right direction,” said Gray Vice President Jim Ocon. He thinks the commission should allow the use of non-ATSC standards, as long as they don’t cause impermissible interference. “If we want to change, we need permission,” Ocon said. “That’s just wrong. Give us the frequencies to operate in, and we won’t go outside our range."

Carriers are reluctant to commit whenever they think they have a good chance of getting incentive auction legislation passed, Aitken said. “There is a level of interest. But I would say the level of interest modulates directly with their notion of how the wind’s blowing with respect to spectrum” auctions on Capitol Hill, he continued. “There’s no reason for them to have an interest if they think they're going to have direct access to the spectrum via auctions.” Two carriers have expressed an interest in the project, and Aitken has discussed it with them, he said, declining to identify them. The four biggest U.S. carriers declined to comment.

CTIA is “interested in incentive auctions,” Vice President Jot Carpenter said. It continues to “believe that the right way to address the rapidly growing demand for wireless broadband services is for Congress to give the FCC the authority to conduct auctions that will put spectrum in the hands of those who will put it to its highest and best use,” he said. “If Sinclair doesn’t want to participate in the voluntary incentive auctions, that’s fine, but they should get out of the way for those who do."

Members of the NAB meanwhile are generally “toeing the NAB’s line” and not backing the coalition’s efforts yet, Aitken said: “I doubt you would have a serious member step forward and say” soon that there shouldn’t be incentive auctions, and instead the U.S. Treasury would get many billions of dollars more in revenue by taking a 5 percent share of ancillary TV station sales from broadband backhaul over the coming years. The coalition this week released the full report of its estimates for what such ancillary revenue could bring the Treasury (http://xrl.us/bmgm8e). It could be $64 billion over 15 years, equating to $1.2 trillion in revenue that broadcasters could keep, Aitken said. NAB believes “there’s some intriguing ideas” to the coalition’s plan, a spokesman said. “We're still reviewing it."

Another coalition member is “absolutely” optimistic that more full-power broadcasters will join the effort, even as NAB has been supporting what the association calls truly voluntary spectrum auctions. Randy Weiss noted that NAB signed at an international broadcaster conference in Shanghai an agreement supporting ATSC’s coming 3.0 standard, which would allow broadband and other features. “It’s my opinion that there will be a growing number of full-powers” interested in joining the coalition, as are some members of the National Religious Broadcasters association, on whose board he sits, Weiss said. “We really do believe this is a viable plan,” said Weiss, who co-owns about 40 low-power TV stations airing religious and other programming. “And our wireless brothers I think also recognize it. They may not want to admit it, but I think they recognize it’s true. They need us and we need them."

IP backhaul is a business opportunity full-power broadcasters can’t forgo, Weiss said. “When they look at the numbers, they will quickly come to realize they can’t afford not to” join the effort, he said. “I don’t think that they have come to the realization of the new-business opportunity that they will be forgoing” if they don’t participate, he said. “If they grapple with what it means to collaborate with the wireless industry ... they will avoid the spectrum auction, because it’s a bad deal” and IP backhaul is a much bigger business than what stations would get from selling spectrum.

ATSC has been sitting out the spectrum debate, and it’s up to the FCC to decide whether to allow other standards for TV stations, said President Mark Richer. “Speaking personally, rushing into something like that would be a real mistake,” since current receivers wouldn’t be able to get the broadband broadcasts, he said. “Once you go non-compatible, that means that every television out there that has ATSC receivers is not going to work.” The coalition offers “an interesting concept” which “I'm sure will be considered in our development of ATSC 3.0. But it’s not likely to be developed in the short term."

Some consulting engineers are skeptical. “I don’t see the path of getting from here to there,” said Ross Heide of Cohen Dippell, who said he likes the model advocated by the coalition. “We don’t have enough bandwidth in this country for everyone to be streaming real-time video” over mobile devices, he said. “But I don’t see how we get to that model, how we step away, now that we have so much vested in the ATSC model.” It might cost less for broadcasters to switch to a DVB-like broadband standard, and for them to start distributing transmitters throughout their coverage area -- much like carriers do now -- than moving channels after an auction, the engineer said: “My guess is an insurmountable uphill battle for having to switch broadcast standards,” however, as with ATSC there’s “just too much momentum on that one right now.”