losing the airwaves

the united states goverment and there fore the people of the usa own the airwaves that tv stations (non cable) use to broadcast their content. the stations have to pass standerds and agree to conditions of use and content to get the abbility to get a temporary liscence from the fcc to broadcast over the spectrums as stated in this qoute from the 1934 communications act “It is the purpose of this act…to maintain the control of the United States over all channels of interstate and foreign radio transmissions; and to provide for the use of such channels, but not the ownership thereof, by persons for limited periods of time under licenses granted by Federal authority.”.

now these spectrums that are indeed owned by the people according to the The 1934 communications act which founded the fcc( the federal comunications commision) are a very valuable commidity the avereage price iv found is about 1 billion dollars as of 2002 for 1 mhz of spectrum, well your average small tv station requires around 6 mhz to brodcast properly . thats 6 billion dollar value for a liscene to operate a single non cable tv station. you can see how this is something that the people of the us should be aware of as its a very costly public resource. now heres whats been bothering me lately the more i think about it. as of january 1 2009 all tv in the us will be switching from the analog airwaves that i just discused to a digital signal.

i cant find anywhere information about wheather this means they will be using the same spectrum as before but just using a digital signal be broadcast over them.. or that we will be abandoning the old spectrum completly for the purpose of television broadcasts. if so it would seem to me that the people of the us are getting screwed here out of a very high value resource and possibly loose any rights we had as citazins to help dictate what sort of content is able to be broadcast on non pay service tv.

these same airwaves are also used for satelite transmissions as well as phone and radio. if the gov is acthualy abondoning the tv broadcasts over the spectrum whats to stop them from doing the same for radio in the future so that the people lose any claim to media broadcasts. are we the people having our airwaves ripped out from under us? are we getting the shaft? everyone id like to hear your thoughs on the subject. and if you have any info pertinent to this post please post it .

edited:for formatting to be easier to read.

[edit on 6/14/2008 by krill]

reply to post by krill

wheather this means they will be using the same spectrum as before but just using a digital signal be broadcast over them

For digital TV, we use DVB here in Europe (most likely the same in Americas). For terrestrial purposes, there is DVB-T and for satellite, there is DVB-S. DVB-T is a standard that generally uses the same frequency band as analogue TV transmission. However, because you have one "multiplex" per channel, and one multiplex contains about 6 channels, the "station-per-megahertz" ratio rises from about 0.2 to about 1

So yes, the digital terrestrial (and also digital satellite) broadcasting uses the same frequency spectrum as their analog counterparts, with the main difference that you can have about 6 times more channels. Good for the media, huh? More brainwashing channels to choose from.

Similar with DAB (digital audio broadcasting), but this will not use the 87,5-108 MHz range which FM radio transmission did, but will move to about 200MHz area, which is the bottom part of the TV spectrum. And also, spectrum will get used much more efficiently - much more stations per MHz.

[edit on 14/6/08 by Disney]

reply to post by Disney


thanks thats good info to know now all i need to know if it will be done in a similar way here in the us. i mean just cuzz its done that way over there dosent mean it will be done that way here . just look at electricity we both have it but i cant plug an american toaster in to a uk socket without a plug adapter.

Well, this is what I have found in the past two minutes.

en.wikipedia.org...

So you have some ATSC, opposed to european DVB. Basically, the standard is a bit different from a tech side (modulation type... ) but looks quite similar from the consumer POV Still can put up to 6 channels into one "analog" channel.

[edit on 14/6/08 by Disney]

[edit on 14/6/08 by Disney]