NAB Skeptical of Proposals to Clear More than 200 MHz in C Band
Broadcasters are generally comfortable with the C-Band Alliance’s plan for the band, and proposals to clear more than 200 MHz won’t work, Bob Weller, NAB vice president-spectrum policy, blogged Monday. “Clearing 200 MHz of C-band spectrum is possible only because…
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the necessary equipment changes are limited to filters, receiver tuning and dish positioning (with few exceptions),” Weller said. “Calculating the costs and timing for those changes is straightforward because at that level, every satellite network is identical: only an antenna and a receiver are involved.” But clearing more than 200 MHz would be “based on supposition and guesswork because the necessary changes move back from the receiver into the guts of the distribution and network systems, and there the various systems become divergent,” he said: “Some suggest that more spectrum can be reallocated if higher-efficiency compression is used. That may be true, but it certainly won’t be fast. When you start changing compression systems, a lot of testing is needed because some systems are more sensitive to the artifacts of compression than others. That testing would be needed on nearly every single network because their characteristics and requirements are not the same.” Broadcast demands also aren’t static, he said. U.S. broadcasters are preparing to upgrade from HD video to 4K “and possibly higher” resolution, he said: “These consumer-driven improvements come at a cost: increased bandwidth. While higher-efficiency compression schemes can partially offset the requirements for increased bandwidth, clearing 200 MHz initially helps future-proof that predictable, but as-yet unknown, need.”