Broadcasters face spectrum battle

Broadcast spectrum has long been a scarce and precious resource. In recent years, though, with the explosive growth in the number of users of cellular phones, smartphones and wireless broadband cards, it's come to resemble Manhattan real estate: in huge demand, with pressure to develop any parcel that seems underutilized. Those pressures are sure to increase under the National Broadband Plan unveiled last week by the FCC.

The plan says little directly about showbiz issues, perhaps because any obvious favors to "liberal Hollywood" are sure to stir up political opposition, but there are some carrots for the entertainment industry, including a couple that have the movie studios salivating. Chief among them are the plan's goal of increasing consumer adoption of broadband Internet and providing super-fast, affordable broadband access for at least 100 million homes within 10 years -- giving much of the country ample bandwidth for video-on-demand, massively multiplayer gaming and 3D streaming. But broadcasters have found the dark cloud around this silver lining -- the necessary sell-off of spectrum to develop all that bandwidth. The plan calls for making a 500 Mhz chunk of the spectrum available for broadband by 2020, with 300 Mhz of that coming within five years -- and 40% of that from TV broadcasters.