Spectrum of Greed

Scary!!

Several of what I am beginning to think of as online tabloids (though many are reputable mainstream publication houses) seem to be nothing more than mouthpieces for a few fear mongers and confusion artists (have I coined a new profession here?) who are fixated on the dire consequences sure to overtake us when the switchover to DTV occurs.  And they obsess about this minutia at a time when our economy is in freefall and we have a congress that wants to play partisan instead of fixing the mess they created to start with.  Why would they be so fixated on such a small percentage of the American people for such an inconsequential issue as the boob tube?

They use phrases like,

“…while the bill would not have exactly solved the readiness issue it is a virtual certainty now that something in the neighborhood of 6 million U.S. homes will be seeing snow instead of their favorite programs on the family set in less than three weeks — unless this inaction by Congress somehow spurs tremendous behavior modification by analog stragglers to do the things they haven’t bothered to do for the past three years”  WIRED

or this one,

“The House’s setback means sets in homes that still depend on rabbit ears — and haven’t been hooked up to a converter box or cable or satellite services — may have TV screens that match the snowy landscape on Feb. 17.”          Star Tribune

But later in both articles and others reveal facts like less than 6% of American households are unready for the transition, meaning that 94% ARE ready (Yahoo article).

Then they go deeper, analyzing the nuances of the bill to delay, questioning it’s actual ability to deliver what is being promised, and re-iterating the original purposes of the 2005 legislation meant to free precious spectrum up for commerce and first responder use (which was the one part that was never done correctly when they had Auction 73 - no vendor met the minimums for the first responder allocation, hence our first responders are still screwed for a unified communications solution) WIRED

But while the fog thickens everywhere including the newly minted Obama administration, one media group, ARS Technica, shines a light on the real battleground - not the $40 set top boxes, but the $40Billion 4G networks being deployed by the winners of that spectrum.  THAT is what got the Senate’s attention and managed in the midst of this economic crisis to push an emergency boob tube bill through.  Unfortunately while they were able to dig up several interesting facts, there is still much that is unknown.  The  positioning that the various vendors are attempting based on their development plans and that of their competitors can be understood.  AT&T and Clearwire on the delay side (with Clearwire on Obama’s advisory team), while Verizon and the Consumer Electronics Association are pushing for staying the course.  If we only had the transparency that Michael Copps has aluded to in his pep speech to the FCC staff.

Stay tuned…