The FCC is getting involved in the war over the wireless spectrum to make sure everyone get's enough bandwidth. But can they help?
Armed with a congressional mandate and stimulus funds, the FCC is working on a National Broadband Plan to ensure the digital media technology industry has sufficient broadband to spur economic growth. The FCC unveiled a sneak peek on Dec. 17 of what it will report to Congress by the Feb. 17, 2010, deadline. Applause was not deafening.
Although Mark Wigfield, the FCC spokesman for the National Broadband Plan says, “I think everybody thinks it’s a good idea to look at who’s not getting service and figure out ways to get it to them,” not everybody seems to agree on how to achieve this goal.
Wigfield says the issue is a critical one, because an explosion of mobile devices and apps for those devices is exponentially draining the available broadband spectrum. “The International Telecom Union said we need 760 – 840 MHz of broadband. Right now we have about 500MHz and we’ve got only about 50 MHz in the pipeline,” Wigfield says. Typically according to an FCC presentation it takes about six to 13 years to release more spectrum.
Tech expert Emily Nagle Green agrees. “Appetites for broadband in both wire line and wireless networks are booming. But that’s been the story since the very dawn of digital networks — demand cyclically threatens to swamp supply as we find new ideas for using the network,” says Green, who is author of ANYWHERE: How Global Connectivity is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business and CEO of the tech research and consulting firm the Yankee Group.
The National Broadband Plan seeks to expand infrastructure through the Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes rural phone service and low-income consumers while looking for ways to maximize our current available spectrum. That means reallocation of unused spectrum and possible channel sharing among broadcasters. There is some agreement on government subsidy for infrastructure expansion but broadcasters are drawing a line in the sand over the last two items.
The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and the Association for Maximum Service Television (MSTV) say taking away spectrum to give to wireless ignores the public service aspects of broadcast. Quoted in Broadcast Engineering, the associations say, “core public interest goals, like providing local news, emergency information, universal service and educational programs, must be taken into account.”
Another issue is the hefty cost of the recent switch to digital programming. “Consumers have spent more than $25 billion in HDTV receivers and more than $2 billion dollars – subsidized by government coupons – on DTV converter boxes. Additionally, broadcasters have invested billions in converting their infrastructure to support DTV,” say the NAB and MSTV.
Nevertheless, Wigfield says the FCC isn’t taking away spectrum. “Nobody is talking about taking away spectrum from TV, we want to find out how they can be fairly compensated for spectrum they’re not using.”
Industry experts say statistics show that broadcast is no longer the major supplier of TV programming. “Only about 14 percent of households with TVs get TV from over-the-air broadcast,” says Rick Rotondo, chief marketing officer and co-founder of Spectrum Bridge, a company that seeks to make spectrum available and productive. “Even that 14 percent may be overstated, because if you take total houses with TV, subtract out those who get TV from cable and satellite, those who get it over the Internet and those who use their TVs only for DVDs and gaming you might get a lower number,” Rotondo adds. “Broadcasters have been fighting making white space available for years because they’re afraid of interference, now since the FCC is talking about taking it, thought leaders in the broadcast industry are saying let’s embrace it.”
White space can be an important rural solution for the shortfall in middle mile infrastructure. Rather than physical lines connecting local nodes, towers and Telco back offices to the big network, Rotondo says the city of Claudville, Va., used unlicensed white space to fill in the middle mile, which actually led to higher speeds than neighboring areas.
Unfortunately, unlicensed white space is more prevalent in rural areas than urban ones. So while white space can help solve the problem of adding access to places that do not currently have it, it doesn’t address the high urban demand for more spectrum. “If you look at urban areas there are more TV stations using more parts of the spectrum but also more mobile Internet usage such as iPhones,” Rotondo says.
To address this issue, the FCC is investigating the feasibility of increased channel sharing. However, entities such as Occam Networks, a rural broadband access provider, are concerned about the customer service implications of channel sharing. “The issue we see is, if we have one station and it’s corrupted, I know where to go for help,” says Russ Sharer, VP of marketing for Occam. “Sharing bears with it the burden of better digital tools to see who’s at fault when there is a problem.”
Industry players are wary of stifling private sector motivation to expand and improve. “In particular in the US due to the apparent causes of the economic crisis, we seem headed for more regulation than I personally think is healthy,” Green says.
Sharer agrees. “We need to design an economic model that makes the networks want to get involved. What happened with Verizon’s FiOS is a great example of how it could work,” Sharer says.
Rotondo also points out that wireless providers should be spectrum efficient. My iPhone automatically switches to Wi-Fi if I’m downloading something that’s bigger than 10MB,” he says. “I think Verizon is starting to realize the savings of using Wi-Fi where available instead of relying just on their broadband network.”
Everyone interviewed by DMB agrees it’s past time to address this issue. “At the highest level Occam believes we’ll all communicate in two ways, antenna and fiber. Anything that makes that antenna more effective and encourages deployment of more fiber is good,” Sharer says.
John Greaves is a freelance writer in the Atlanta, Ga. area. His work has appeared in newspapers and other online platforms.
