Gadgetory

television has always been the king of the airwaves imprints of man's never-ending path of progress silhouetted against the ageless canvas of the sky the era of television there's the CBS we are well into the 21st century at this point and the growth medium is mobile in fact some recent numbers crunched by emarketer showed that mobile data growth has gone up Sevenfold TV remained basically flat print and radio seeing pronounced declines we need more space for the one that's growing so the FCC has announced something called a broadcast incentive auction the incentive is cash being dangled in front of TV stations who will let go of their airwaves put those into a lottery and then allow the FCC to repack the usage of the airwaves making more room for wireless data the focus here is on UHF broadcast stations that are on the air and sort of the mid to upper UHF channels it's the so-called 600 megahertz band where they operate that is so tasty because that kind of airway tends to reach a long way get through obstacles work its way around buildings do all that very well companies like Sprint and t-mobile tend to have a paucity of this kind of spectrum they're in higher frequencies there are no more brittle if you will in their propagation AT&T and Verizon on the other hand have a fairly good amount of lower frequency spectrum that behaves well like this 600 megahertz stuff the problem is if you dissuade them from buying more of it you then lower the amount of money coming into this auction which the Commission needs to incentive e stations to give it up in the first place regardless of how this auction is massaged wireless carriers need more spectrum to move data over the air a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers study estimates it from 2013-2018 wireless data usage is going to go up 61 percent now a lot of that demand will be carried by putting new towers or additional bandwidth through towers the kind that you see in your neighborhood and that you hear have all kinds of real estate and neighbor objections to their installation there's also a push out there to use UHF channel 37 that particular slice to create a new area for Wi-Fi hotspots which may not sound related but it is because carriers are pushing hard now to move more of your smartphone traffic onto Wi-Fi hotspots that automatically recognize you as a customer as you move around and put less of a load on towers now as you can imagine this is a complicated and contentious process dealing with some public airwave assets that have been in place for a long time moving them is always a little touchy right now the nab the broadcasters association has a lawsuit filed to block the FCC's plan until that takes hold we have an auction set for mid-2015 in light of all this interesting study from gfk research indicates a multi-year trend of Americans moving gradually but noticeably more toward airwave TV reception now a lot of these homes have always been rural homes that's all they ever had take them out what apparently accounts for the trend line up our cord cutters people who are saying wait a minute I want that broadcast airwaves signal for local news and sports and then I'm going to augment everything else coming off internet streaming and cut out the pay TV in the middle bottom line local TV stations have basically five options they lay out like this stay on the air in their current channel but the FCC might move that channel to defrag the airwaves after this auction move off of UHF which is the choice pot for this data and down to a VHF channel leave its current channel and share one with another station leave broadcast and go to cable satellite or online only or take the cash and leave the airwaves keeping your station alive only on other platforms this auction is historic the first time that broadcasters have been allowed to sell their allocated public spectrum for a profit because it is that important to reform it right now and allocate it to mobile data carriers it's an indication that mobile data is central to our lives not peripheral