FCC Rejects Digital TV Broadcast Rule
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Federal regulators Thursday rejected a request by broadcasters to require cable operators to carry multiple digital channel offerings from local television stations.
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Television broadcasters won a temporary victory yesterday when a federal appeals court told the Federal Communications Commission not to enforce an indecency ruling it imposed on several television shows earlier this year.
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It&#39;s one of the biggest technical changes in television since color TV: the digital transition. And because many Americans remain in the dark about it, federal regulators
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U.S. television broadcasters on Monday labeled as inadequate planned legislation to ensure millions of consumers can still watch television once broadcasters begin airing only in digital.
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The U.S. Federal Communications   Commission on Tuesday set a road map for making vacant   television airwaves available for other services by early 2009,   when broadcasters are due to switch to digital signals.
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By TIM CUPRISIN  Consider today's column a warning.  If nothing changes, your old TV may not be working two years from today, thanks to a Feb. 17, 2009, federal deadline for TV stations to switch from the traditional analog method of broadcasting to digital technology.
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A federal appeals court on Friday denied a request from Tribune Co., publisher of the Chicago Tribune, to allow mergers between newspapers and broadcast stations in markets with at least nine television stations.
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Conditions in developing nations could hamper the spread of digital TV, a broadcast conference is told.
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Signal piracy clampdown 'unnecessary' Dell, HP, AT&amp;T, Sony and others have joined forces to oppose a plan that would give broadcasters a whole new set of intellectual property rights over television programmes. They will fight to stop the UN proposal being adopted internationally.â¦
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It has been 11 years since Congress voted to break the cable television industry's stranglehold on set-top boxes &#151; the devices that consumers need to receive digital programming and change channels.
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Less than thirteen months remain for US television stations to move off the old analog VHF and UHF spectra, into their new digital allotments. But even now, the FCC has to deal with stations that have yet to finalize their construction plans.
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(InfoWorld) - M2Z Networks may sue the U.S. Federal Communications Commission after the agency turned down its request for radio frequencies for a national broadband wireless network. On Aug. 31, the FCC rejected M2Z's plan to roll out free and paid services reaching at least 95 percent of the Americas. For that service, M2Z asked for 20MHz of spectrum for which it would pay the government 5 percent of its annual gross revenue. M2Z proposed the plan in May 2006. The FCC didn't rule on the plan within a year and apparently didn't look at M2Z's supporting documents because it never commented on them, according to M2Z co-founder and CEO John Muleta. Legally it had to do both, Muleta said, so M2Z is considering filing suit in a federal appeals court. The issue of wireless spectrum is heating up as the FCC heads toward its planned JanuaryÂ auction of frequencies in the 700MHz bandÂ being vacated by analog TV stations.Â Google and othersÂ wanted the FCC to require wholesale access to that spectrum so that multiple providers could offer services. It eventually included a provision for some spectrum to be usable for any application on any device. M2Z wants to use spectrum between 2155MHz and 2175MHz, a band previously used for microwave links between carrier facilities, which the FCC set aside for AWS (Advanced Wireless Services) in 2000. The agency has no plan yet for how to assign the spectrum. In its order rejecting M2Z's plan, the FCC said, "the public interest is best served by first seeking public comment on how the band should be used and licensed." The order turned down M2Z's plan "without prejudice," meaning it didn't stop the company from proposing it again, according to Muleta. M2Z plans to participate in the future public comment process but believes FCC's indecision has gone on too long already. "They took 15 months to decide that they really couldn't make a decision," Muleta said. Meanwhile, the country still lacks sufficient broadband competition, he said. M2Z wants to deliver a free service, supported partly by locally targeted search advertising, at 384Kbps downstream and 128Kbps upstream. People would only have to give a valid e-mail address or phone number to use it. Like broadcast TV, the free service would be "family friendly," meaning it would filter out content that wasn't appropriate for children. A paid service on the same network would offer 3Mbps throughput and access to anything on the Internet. Muleta knows who he's up against. He was chief of the FCC's wireless bureau from 2003 to 2005. M2Z, founded in 2005 and based in Menlo Park, Calif., is backed by Silicon Valley venture capital firms. One wireless analyst said the free service wouldn't be fast enough for most consumers. He also questioned its "family friendly" content restrictions. "At that point, you're not really giving Internet service," said Sascha Meinrath, research director for the Wireless Future program at the public policy group New America Foundation. But even if its service never gets turned on, M2Z has done its part to foster broadband competition, Meinrath said. "M2Z has pretty single-handedly shifted the debate," Meinrath said. Its plan to pay for spectrum through royalties rather than up front, as well as to make more efficient use of spectrum and offer a free service, are likely to show up in future spectrum allocation plans, he said. More efficient wireless networks should mean more bandwidth at lower cost --Â a better deal for consumers, Meinrath said.
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A coalition of technology and telecommunications vendors will oppose a plan to give U.S. public safety agencies a new wireless spectrum.
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The United Church of Christ, one of the nation&#39;s most liberal Christian denominations, accused CBS and NBC yesterday of rejecting a commercial it had produced about religious
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Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell has rejected lawmakers' requests that the agency stop Sinclair Broadcasting from airing a documentary critical of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry.
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The head of the Federal  Communications Commission has recommended it reject indecency  complaints against ABC television stations that recently aired  the film "Saving Private Ryan," an FCC official said on Monday.
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The Federal Communications Commission rejected a request Wednesday to begin imposing indecency standards on satellite radio, where frequent agency target Howard Stern is taking his show.