Digital TV Distributed Transmission System Technologies

DIGITAL TV DISTRIBUTED TRANSMISSION SYSTEM TECHNOLOGIES
[SOURCE: New America Foundation]
On Tuesday, the New America Foundation was joined by a number of groups in an ex parte filing at the FCC. In the filing, the commenters argue that broadcasters seeking expanded coverage via distributed transmission system technologies (DTS) continue to fail to acknowledge the huge opportunity costs associated with the massive expansion in geographic service area rights that they are requesting. Broadcasters also continue to assert that expanded geographic service area rights will
result in large benefits for the public; for example, the expansion of “free TV” service. But nowhere do they quantify those benefits or even credibly commit to continue
providing “free TV” service. Broadcasters also continue to pretend to already have as part of their licenses virtually all the rights they request. But the rights they are in fact requesting represent a huge modification of their licenses. Arguments to the contrary merely amount to clever word games. The FCC should thus allocate these white spaces the way it would allocate any other unused spectrum. That is, consistent with the Communications Act’s prohibition of unjustified enrichment, it should conduct some type of comparative process to allocate the unused spectrum rather than merely give it to the nearby incumbents who in this case happen to be high power TV broadcasters.
http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_doc...