FCC: We're Not Picking Spectrum Winners, Losers

Phil Bellaria, the Federal Communications Commission's director of scenario planning for the National Broadband Plan, suggests you take a chill pill.

He says broadcasters are lobbying against a "worst-case" scenario that is no longer under consideration -- if it ever was. The former Charter Communications executive says the spectrum reclamation plan currently being prepared for vetting by the FCC Commissioners would be voluntary and would not require any broadcaster to sell its spectrum to the government or give up the ability to transmit in high definition, multicast or mobile, at least initially. However, the FCC might have to look at the spectrum issue again later, depending on demand. Bellaria says that suggestions by broadcasters that the FCC or special interests are trying to take broadcasters' spectrum were off the mark. "The reality is that we are not trying to take spectrum from any individual broadcaster unless that broadcaster chooses to do it," he said.