FCC chief: Switch to digital TV won't be postponed
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In a broad discussion at the Consumer Electronics Show, U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC)&#160;Chairman Kevin Martin on Tuesday confirmed that the deadline for the country&#39;s switch to digital TV next year will not be postponed, explained the rationale behind the requirements for the current 700MHz auction, and gave hints about his thinking regarding various communications megamergers.Interviewed at the show by Consumer Electronics Association President Gary Shapiro, Martin said the February 2009 deadline for the digital TV switch is a &quot;hard deadline.&quot; He said a postponement would &quot;dis-incentivize&quot; industry to make the transition.&quot;After all of our efforts we couldn&#39;t just turn around and say &#39;We&#39;re just kidding,&#39;&quot; he said.About 50 percent of all homes in the U.S. now have digital TVs, and the CEA forecasts that some 28 million digital TVs will be bought in the U.S. this year, Shapiro noted.The transition to digital will not only improve picture quality for consumers, but also free up spectrum that can be used for wireless broadband, Martin stressed. He also noted that the extra spectrum provided by the switch would be used to improve public safety, allowing for better communications between fire departments and police. The need for better coordination among law enforcement and safety officials was a major point made in the 9/11 Commission report, he noted.Requirements related to the auction for 700MHz spectrum blocks in the U.S. will play an important part in bringing broadband access to more people, such as inhabitants in rural areas, who have limited wireless options now, he said.The spectrum auction has been broken up into blocks. One block, for example, has open-access rules and is broken up into 12 regional licenses across the U.S. There are also &quot;buildout&quot; requirements that will ensure that auction winners will actually put the spectrum to use in a reasonable timeframe, Martin said.He declined to comment directly on the planned merger of Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio, currently under review by the Department of Justice. But he noted that the companies have been talking about a la carte pricing plans for shows, which would give consumers a wide range of options to choose different bundles of programs and prices. Martin said he would encourage content providers -- especially cable TV companies -- to offer this type of program-options plan.One disappointment in the wake of communications industry deregulation has been the rising price of cable TV, he said.Martin stopped short of saying that approval of the Sirius-XM merger would set a regulatory precedent for a rumored merger deal between satellite TV companies Echostar and DirecTV. But he did say that it would be important for the satellite TV companies to give consumers more pricing and program bundle options as part of any merger plan.&quot;This is the type of thing we&#39;d be looking at,&quot; he said.
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The U S Federal Communications Commission may vote on Dec. 20 to make it easier for AT&amp;T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. to sell television service, FCC chairman Kevin Martin said.
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(InfoWorld) - U.S. senators questioned Thursday whether members of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission plan to enforce merger conditions that AT&T Inc. agreed to in its December acquisition of BellSouth Corp. Democratic members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee questioned why FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate issued a joint statement while approving the merger saying the FCC couldn't broadly enforce some of AT&T's concessions. "What I find difficult to understand is that ... you said that you do not intend to stand by the deal that was reached," said Senator Daniel Inouye, the committee chairman and a Hawaii Democrat. Martin and Tate, both Republicans, had protested a net neutrality condition, preventing AT&T from giving priority transmission speeds to its own or its partners' Web content for at least two years. The net neutrality conditions "very well may cause greater problems than the speculative problems they seek to address," Martin and Tate said in the statement Dec. 29. Martin on Thursday said he intends to hold AT&T to the net neutrality agreement, but he doesn't plan to impose those standards on other broadband carriers. "Since [AT&T] volunteered to do that, we would enforce that," he said. "That does not mean we were changing our policy." Martin also suggested another part of the agreement setting out wholesale rates for some data services may be unenforceable. "What is your legal authority as chairman ... to not enforce something you just did?" asked Senator Mark Pryor, an Arkansas Democrat. AT&T agreed to lower the wholesale special access prices for DS1, DS3, and Ethernet services available to some regional telecom carriers and large businesses, but not to large competitors. But the FCC's policy in the past has been that wholesale discounts should apply to all customers, Martin said. "That tariff actually has some components that I believe are illegal under the commission precedent," Martin said. "They can file [the proposed discount], but I'm not committing to approving something that would be in violation of our precedent. We don't allow for that kind of discrimination." But Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, a Democrat who pushed for conditions on the AT&T merger, noted that the FCC adopted the AT&T merger conditions on a 4-0 vote. "It's hard for me to understand why we can't implement something we adopted unanimously," he said. Senators also urged the FCC to work on ways to get broadband service to rural, inner city and poor areas. The FCC on Wednesday issued a report saying the number of high-speed lines in the U.S. increased by 26 percent during the first half of 2006, from 51.2 million to 64.6 million lines in service. The number of high-speed lines grew by 21 percent in the second half of 2005. Senators also pointed to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's latest study saying the U.S. ranks 12th in broadband adoption rate among industrialized nations. Commissioner Michael Copps called on Congress and the FCC to develop a national broadband strategy. He called the U.S. broadband adoption rates "woeful." "I am really worried that we can go into the 21st century and have a bigger digital divide in this country ... than we had back in the days of plain, old telephone service in the 20th century," he said. "This just isn't feel-good liberal theory -- we're talking about the competitiveness of the United States of America."
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The DTV transitionis still on schedule for next year, except now some of the major retailers involved in getting new DTV broadcast converter boxes distributed, are worried that the US government won't be able to pull this off.
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A congressional investigator warned a Senate panel Wednesday that there is no lead agency responsible for helping the nation navigate the transition to digital TV broadcasting.
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The U.S. Federal Communications  Commission cannot stop the broadcast of a show critical of  Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry's anti-war  comments after returning from Vietnam, the agency's head said  on Thursday.
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Michael K. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has been at the forefront of efforts to get consumers to buy high-definition TVÂs.
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With over-the-air television broadcasts switching from analog to digital in just over a year, converter boxes are expected to be among the hot devices on display at next week's CES.
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By Wendy Brown, The Santa Fe New Mexican  Feb. 11--ALBUQUERQUE -- Chris Duncan, general manager of Comcast in Albuquerque, wants his company to come to an agreement with KRQE officials about the rights to future high-definition television broadcasts as soon as possible.
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Yesterday, Michael Powell, US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman said that technology and telecommunications companies are working on ways to develop pipe television shows to consumers&#39; homes via high-speed Internet lines.
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(InfoWorld) - A group of broadcasters, consumer electronics vendors, and civil rights groups pledged Wednesday to leave no television viewers behind as the U.S. transitions to digital over-the-air broadcasts by February 2009. The groups, collectively known as the Digital Television Transition Coalition, will use a variety of means, including public service announcements and community-based campaigns,Â to educate TV viewers about the transition from analog broadcasts. An estimated 20 million U.S. homes, containing 90 million TV sets, that don't have cable or satellite service will need to buy converter boxes or new TV sets to continue to receive over-the-air digital broadcasts. People with analog TV sets will no longer receive over-the-air signals after the Feb. 17, 2009, deadline. Congress has approved $1.5 billion for vouchers for residents to buy converter boxes in a bill passed last year. The bill requires U.S. TV stations to move off radio spectrum in the upper 700MHz band with that highly coveted spectrum going to public safety agencies and commercial bidders. Cable and satellite viewers will not need to buy converter boxes or new TVs. Starting this week, all television sets shipped across state lines in the U.S. must be capable of receiving a digital signal. "Part of our job ... will to be to help many people understand that, while they may think they have a problem, in reality, they are already well equipped to deal with the transition and enjoy the benefits," said Marc Pearl, executive director of the Consumer Electronics Retailers Coalition. "It is essential that nobody loses a TV signal due to a lack of accurate information." Many of the people affected by the transition will be poor or elderly people, said Nancy Zirkin, vice president and director of public policy at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. The coalition needs to "make sure that this audience knows before the switch that they are eligible for federal vouchers," she said. The coalition launched a Web site to help educate TV viewers on the switch to DTV. In a recent survey of over-the-air viewers, the National Association of Broadcasters found that 56 percent of respondents reported that they have "seen, read, or heard nothing" about the transition to digital television, and only 10 percent were able to pinpoint 2009 as the year. The upper 700MHz band would allow wireless signals to travel four to five times as far as existing mobile phone signals, advocates of the digital televisionÂ transition say. That makes the spectrum valuable for mobile broadband providers and for police and fire departments that want to communicate with regional counterparts. Among the coalition members are the Association of Public Television Stations, the Consumer Electronics Association, and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.
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Crossover to digital televisions is happening earlier than expected, with North America expected to follow suit soon.
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The U.S. Federal Communications  Commission on Tuesday set a roadmap for making airwaves between  television channels available for other services by early 2009,  when broadcasters are due to switch to digital signals.
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Americans are becoming more aware of  next year's switch-over to digital television, but many are  still confused about how they will be affected, according to a  pair of surveys released on Wednesday.
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&quot;If we don&#39;t move forward on that pretty soon, we run the risk of have multiple state actions and court rulings to contend with,&quot; said Jeffrey Carlisle, chief of the FCC&#39;s wireline competition bureau.
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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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Americans are becoming more aware of  next year's switch-over to digital TV, but many are still  confused about how they will be affected, according to a pair  of surveys released on Wednesday.