Yesterday President Bush signed legislation setting 2/28/09 as a hard date for return of analog broadcast spectrum and allocating up to $1.5 billion to help fund digital-to-analog converters for owners of analog-only TV sets.
Coming just a few days after Senate Commerce Committee hearings on net neutrality, this milestone in the decades-long digital TV spectrum saga got me thinking how the broadcast spectrum transition relates to the broader transition underway in the media and telecom industries.
Specifically, it got me wondering how broadcast spectrum—which is arguably underutilized and has attractive propagation characteristics—can be used to create more facilities-based competition, which many believe is the best solution for the underlying problems net neutrality advocates are concerned about.
While there are clear potential benefits from the current plans to auction 60 MHz in the 700 MHz band (under the bill, this would occur 1/28/08) and assign another 24 MHz to public safety applications, a paper authored by J. H. (Jim) Snider, Research Director of the New America Foundation’s (NAF) Wireless Future Program, argues that there’s still a lot more untapped value that can be extracted from the huge swath of spectrum broadcasters have controlled for decades.
Specifically, says Snider, it’s possible (and desirable) to use spectrum in the still-underutilized digital broadcast band (channels 2-51, much of it in the 500-600 MHz range) for unlicensed provision of broadband access services, without interfering with broadcasters’ digital TV signals.
Broadcasters, not surprisingly, disagree with Snider’s conclusion on the interference question. Snider and his colleagues respond to broadcast industry arguments here and here.
If Snider’s view holds water technically, this has potentially big implications for the broadband policy debate and the future competitive dynamics of the broadband access market. According to a recent study by Free Press and NAF, depending on the local market, there’s somewhere between 100 and 250 MHz of available “white space” (unused spectrum that can be used for low-power unlicensed applications without problematic interference with digital broadcast signals) within the digital broadcast spectrum (Chs. 2-51). A highly-cellularized, strongly propagating but low-power-consuming wireless platform could presumably deliver a whole lot of bandwidth using 100-250 MHz. And it could probably do so pretty cost-effectively if it followed the cost-reduction curve that has characterized WiFi and other unlicensed standards-based radio devices.
While more rural markets tend to have more available spectrum (e.g., 248 MHz in Fargo, ND), the study found that even major metro markets like Boston, San Francisco and Dallas have as much as 114-120 MHz of vacant DTV spectrum that could be used for low-power unlicensed applications.
Below are some excerpts from Snider’s paper, entitled “Reclaiming the Vast Wasteland: The Economic Case for Re-Allocating To Unlicensed Service The Unused Spectrum (White Space) Between TV Channels 2 and 51.” I’d strongly recommend it to anyone who cares about expanding broadband capacity, availability and competition.
[E]ven after channels 52 to 69 are returned, substantial guard band spectrum will remain, especially in small TV markets, on the 49 channels from channels 2 to 51. The difference is that these freed up channels will not be contiguous. For example, an unused channel in Baltimore may be in use in the adjacent markets of Washington, DC and Philadelphia.
Until recently, it was thought that non-contiguous spectrum allocations would have very little economic value—just like forty scattered quarter acre real estate parcels may be less valuable for commercial development than a contiguous ten acre lot. Why would a manufacturer want to produce a wireless device that couldn’t be used nationally? How would it be possible to make a portable spectrum using device that would work in Baltimore on a particular channel but wouldn’t work in Philadelphia on the same channel, even if transported there? Accordingly, the guard band channels that would continue to be allotted market-by-market in Swiss cheese fashion after the digital TV transition generated relatively little commercial interest.
However, the technological environment has rapidly changed. With the advent of low-power, “smart radios” providing broadband service, the ability of localized wireless broadband operators to utilize non-contiguous spectrum has dramatically increased. High-tech companies, including Intel and Microsoft, have used their substantial technological and economic credibility to argue that such “smart radios” are the perfect application for this Swiss cheese guard band spectrum.
The unused TV spectrum occupies the low frequencies. The best use of low frequency spectrum is for broadband, not broadcast service. Licensed spectrum works well for high-power broadband service, but not for low-power broadband service within public or private real property lines. Fundamental forces are driving the world toward wireless networks constituted of low-power devices, such as home WiFi, enterprise WiFi, municipal WiFi and highway WiFi. Therefore, the white space should be allocated to unlicensed, low-power service.
Mitch Shapiro at 5:04 PM|Comments(0)
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