The FCC is currently looking at ways to open up more airwaves so that mobile providers will be able to increase the availability of wireless broadband services. The reasoning for this is because the FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski , has warned that the US does not have enough spectrum set aside for mobile broadband. The idea is to take back some of the spectrum currently held by television stations and auction it off to mobile providers (much like it recently did with the analog frequencies). The plan, while not finalized, does make one extreme suggestion that some users may be forced to switch to a paid for services if parts of the spectrum are taken back by the government.
"Such an approach would cost about $12 billion in payments to broadcasters and about $9 billion to ‘migrate all households that rely on over-the-air broadcasts to subscription services,' the study found."
The details of the plan are not expected until February but at this point nothing is off the table. The FCC is looking to expand mobile broadband services and is willing to do what it takes to make sure that it happens.
and how would you migrate everyone to subscription services? first of most OTA people wouldnt pay for cable or sat to start with, they are use to free, secondly a lot of out of the way areas would be very hard to wire for just a few people and the cable companies would say no way to the cost.
As for the thoughts on buying cable or sat TV...I don't know about you, but when I was young there was drinking fountains on most street corners. I thought that living on a water planet made it a God given right to always get a drink of water. I never would have believed that clever marketing and fear mongering would have made it possible to actually SELL bottles of water.
So as the drinking fountains disappeared, people had no choice but to buy beverages or take them from home. The same thing will happen with TV. Heck, remember when you got you first house telephone and it was less than $20 a month? Did you ever believe people would pay in a month what most home phones cost in a year, just to have a phone that you carry around with you? I didn't...but I'm one of the millions doing it.
Never underestimate the ability of people to fall in line
So the 1st question to ask, is who stands to make money? Washington DC doesn't come up with this stuff unless some special interests or companies they have ties to stand to profit. Off the top of my head I'd say ATT, since they're hurting with all those iPhones, but that's just a 1st guess.
That's why I say look for whomever stands to make a LOT of money... The current gov just went through an expensive song & dance, delaying the rollout of digital OTA because they were so worried about disadvantaged Americans being under-served etc, allotting more money for free converter boxes & so on.
At this point the gov spending any more money is almost irrelevant far as they're concerned -- it's like going on a credit card shopping spree 3 days before you declare bankruptcy.
It'll be hard to figure the whole mess out (if anyone ever does entirely), as we've got the gov wanting to increase broadband access, meaning more as well as improved land-lines to the exact same rural areas where people rely on the OTA broadcast they want to take away [can't switch these folks to cable if there's no cable laid]. At the same time they're going after the companies that would lay that cable with Net Neutrality [maybe not a bad thing in principle, but they're over-reaching & over-regulating while grabbing power in the fine print] -- those companies have already said it wouldn't pay to lay new lines or maintain what they've got if proposed net neutrality regs go through.
*Maybe* ATT will get government assistance laying line, perhaps both cash & *assistance* dealing with the local governments [that's often the hard part for them], getting a big boost in their war with the cable companies? For the gov it could be just like another car company or bank to [behind the scenes] take charge of & run.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.