FCC Wants To Transition Broadcast TV Spectrum To Mobile Use
After creating a HDTV standard that does not work in rual areas. The FCC now says that HDTV brodcast is a falure and they want to take the channels and give them to broadband.
There is a massive amount of unlocked value in the broadcast TV spectrum, Genachowski said, noting that one study found that as much as $50 billion in spectrum could be freed up if policies were adopted to transition broadcast spectrum to mobile spectrum.
“The highly valuable spectrum currently allocated for broadcast television is not being used efficiently — indeed, much is not being used at all,” Genachowski said.
Although about 300MHz of spectrum has been reserved for broadcast TV, in markets with less than 1 million people only about 36MHz is typically used. In larger markets, only about 100MHz to 150MHz out of 300MHz are now used for broadcast TV, he said.
What he is talking about is that many stations are not using the entire channel they were given and broadcasting in SD because the viewers have problems receiving the HDTV and very few are using the extra space for extra channels.
