Incentive Auctions [telecom]

This is a post about the upcoming Incentive Auctions proposed by the FCC. The objective of the incentive auction is to consolidate ("repack") the television broadcast band by moving some stations to other channels. In the process, the FCC hopes to clear at least 100 MHz of bandwidth for mobile data and other applications.

The auction has two parts:

PART 1 - CHANNEL BUYBACK: The FCC wants broadcast stations currently operating on conflicting channels to "voluntarily" move to other channels, or to consolidate their signals with other stations (thereby allowing two stations to operate within the same 6-MHz channel). In exchange, the FCC would pay participating stations big bucks to reimburse them for their costs. Congress has appropriated several million dollars for this purpose.

PART 2 - BANDWIDTH AUCTIONS: The cleared bandwidth would then be auctioned to mobile data providers or other users in accordance with established auction procedures.

Moderator Bill Horne has asked me to address the following questions:

[Q1] *HOW* does this affect telecom? [A1] Repacking TV channels is supposed to make spectrum space available for other services such as mobile data. Depending on the success of the auctions, as much as 100 MHz could be cleared.

Further information:

- FCC:

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- FierceWireless:

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- WSJ:

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- B&C:

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- Policy Tracker:

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[Q1A] Will there be more or less bandwidth available for cellular, for mobile data, or for other telecom uses? [A1A] More. That's the objective. [Q1B] Will any current cellular users be affected? In other words, will the auctions precede some major change to the cellular allocations? [A1B] That's not an advertised part of the plan, but I wouldn't attempt to predict what the FCC might do in the future. This is an important question and one that T-D readers might be interested in discussing. I suspect that there are some T-D readers who know more about the auctions than I do (Garrett Wollman perhaps). [Q2] Those whom are "in the business" sometimes use jargon that's a bit beyond ordinary readers ... "Full Power" and "Class A" are confusing: what's the difference? Why is it important? [A2] Distinctions:

FULL-POWER TELEVISION STATIONS. Full-power stations:

- Typically originate several hours of programming per week.

- Operate at power levels of 100 Kw. or more.

- Have "must-carry" rights for carriage by cable TV and Satellite TV retailers.

- Have protected channel assignments (cannot be bumped off channel by another full-power station).

- Are eligible to participate in the incentive auction.

CLASS A LOW-POWER TELEVISION STATIONS. Class A LPTV stations:

- Are identified by callsign suffix -CA (analog) or -CD (digital).

- Must originate at least two hours of local programming per week.

- Must operate a studio inside Grade B Contour

- Maximum power 15 Kw.

- Do NOT have must-carry rights.

- Have protected channel assignments.

- Are eligible to participate in the incentive auction.

NON-CLASS A LOW-POWER TELEVISION STATIONS. All other LPTV stations:

- Are identified by callsign suffix -LP.

- Usually originate some programming, not necessarily local.

- Maximum power 15 Kw.

- Do NOT have must-carry rights.

- Do NOT Have protected channel assignments.

- Are NOT eligible to participate in the incentive auction.

The importance of these distinctions: Full-power and Class A stations are eligible to participate in the incentive auction. Non-Class-A LPTVs are NOT eligible, and may lose their operating licenses in the process (but they may attempt to move if they can find a place to land).

[Q3] What is the "Incentive Auction"? What changes does it/will it make? [A3] See above. [Q4] Will "repacking" cause stations to have to buy new transmitters? [A3] Maybe, maybe not. If two stations share the same data stream from the same transmitter, then an existing digital TV transmitter might be sufficient. [Q4] Is it a "virtual" move, which just changes the channel numbers viewers see? [A4] Just the opposite. If a station's signal moves to a different frequency, the virtual channel number seen by the viewer stays the same (unless the station itself opts to do otherwise). Even if two stations share the same transmitter and the same 6-MHz channel, each can have a separate virtual channel number. [Q5] Will stations be given the option to share transmitters? [A5] Yes. They're encouraged to do so.

Neal McLain

Reply to
Neal McLain
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To answer this question with greater specificity: most of the time they will not need to buy a new transmitter, however many stations will need to buy new antennas, and most stations (unless they choose to "share time" with another station) will need to retune their transmitters (a fairly complicated procedure possibly requiring components to be replaced, as most TV transmitters are not frequency-agile). The only stations that should need to buy entirely new transmitters would be those moving from upper UHF spectrum to VHF

-- and they will need to buy new antennas as well, unless it happens that they are moving back to their old analog channel AND the old antenna is still good and the old pattern meets the DTV spacing requirements.

The FCC proposes to include at least channels 38 to 51 -- the high end of the current UHF TV band -- in the auction. Just to make this a bit more concrete, here's a listing of what the current allocations look like in the Boston area (TV market #6), with virtual channels in parentheses:

VHF chanels:

9 - WMUR (9) [d] // owned by Hearst 10 - WWDP (46) 11 - WENH (11) // 12 and 13 used in Providence

UHF channels: // 17 used in Providence

18 - WMFP (62) [a] // owned by NRJ, a spectrum speculator 19 - WGBH (2) [b] // owned by WGBH Educational Foundation 20 - WCVB (5) [b] // owned by Hearst // 21 and 22 used in Providence 25 - WFXZ-CA (31) [a] 27 - WUTF (66) // owned by Univision, operated by Entravision 29 - WUNI (27) // owned by Entravision 30 - WBZ (4) [b] // owned by CBS 31 - WFXT (25) [c] // owned by Fox 32 - WBPX (68) [a] // owned by ION 33 - WPXG (21) // owned by ION 34 - WNEU (60) [d] // owned by NBC Universal 35 - WBIN (50) 39 - WSBK (38) [b] // owned by CBS 40 - WDPX (58) // owned by ION 41 - WLVI (56) [c] // owned by Sunbeam 42 - WHDH (7) // owned by Sunbeam 43 - WGBX (44) [b] // owned by WGBH Educational Foundation 47 - WYDN (48) [a] 49 - WEKW (52) // 50 and 51 used in Providence [a] currently located at ATC Newton tower ("FM-128", ex-WHDH-TV 5, 1165 Chestnut St.) [b] currently located at ATC Needham tower ("Westinghouse", ex-Richland, ex-CBS, 350 Cedar St.) [c] currently located at ATC Needham tower ("Candelabra", 140 Cabot St.) [d] currently located on Mt. Uncanoonuc, Goffstown, N.H.

So if channels 38 and higher go to successful auction, that means finding new homes for WSBK, WDPX, WLVI, WHDH, WGBX, WYDN, and WEKW. WYDN (a religious station) is an ideal candidate for conversion to low-band VHF, since nobody watches its OTA signal anyway. WEKW is New Hampshire Public TV's station in Keene, and they have been strapped for cash since their state grant was terminated a few years ago. WGBX could "share time" with sister station WGBH on channel 19. WDPX (on Cape Cod) could just go away (and take the money), or could be another conversion to low-power VHF operation. WSBK could "share time" with sister station WBZ on channel 30.

That leaves co-owned WHDH and WLVI, which are on adjacent channels. WHDH is on the old channel 7 tower, and after the DTV transition operated on channel 7 for several months, but the limitations of the DTV signal on that channel caused them to move back to their transitional DTV channel, 42. As far as I know, the channel 7 antenna is still mounted on WHDH's tower, which the station owns outright. WLVI on the other hand is on a leased tower (the UHF Candelabra, of which it was an anchor tenant back in the 1970s) about half a mile away. The cheapest option would be for WLVI to "share time" with WHDH. In that case, the auction payments combined with savings on tower rent would certainly be sufficient either to build fill-in translators to make up for the poor coverage of VHF channel 7, or to acquire channel 18 (WMFP) from spectrum speculator NRJ and move there instead. (They could do so from the existing WHDH tower, as WMFP is located close by, but they would have to buy a new antenna -- I don't believe the existing channel 42 antenna is broadband enough to transmit at channel 18.) Or perhaps they could move WLVI to channel

18 and not "share time" with WHDH, moving the latter to channel 7.

(In addition to WMFP, I would assume that WBPX, WPXG, WDPX, WUTF, and WWDP are all available for the right offer.)

Now, this is all assuming that all of the affected licensees participate. But in my view this should be a no-brainer for a company like CBS, whose "broadcast" strategy is predicated on MVPD retransmission fees, and given CBS's reluctance thus far to multicast on its DTV facilities (such as WBZ-TV and WSBK in Boston), it's possible that they have been planning for this from the beginning. It's also possible that some stations' bids may be too high to win; it's not clear what will happen if the "voluntary" repacking fails to release enough spectrum. If the alternative is the FCC ordering recalcitrant stations to relocate without compensation -- which the FCC has been at pains to play down in its discussions with broadcasters -- that will have an effect on the bids broadcasters will make for their spectrum.

The assumption is that spectrum speculators like NRJ will take the going rate, whatever that turns out to be, because they have no intention of being in the TV business long-term. (How this will work out in a market like Boston where they don't have auctionable spectrum is unclear, but presumably their expectation is that they will sell their spectrum to someone who both is in the auction and wants to continue broadcasting, probably for a cut of the auction proceeds.)

-GAWollman

Reply to
Garrett Wollman

Some questions:

  1. I very surprised to see that channel 7 is still in use: I thought all the stations had gone to "UHF" channels. Channel 7 is around 175 MHz, and ISTM that those frequencies would be the ones most desired for "5G" data offerings.
  2. Come to think of it, the Pentagon still uses most of the 200-400 MHz spectrum: will there be any movement there?
  3. IIRC, The "Low" VHF band is now vacant, correct? That's 54 to 72 and 76 to 88 MHz, and I'm wondering what plans the FCC has for it. Come to think of /that/, will Aircraft Marker Beacons stay at 75 MHz?
  4. When stations "share time" on the same transmitter, do they give up the capacity for added virtual channels? For instance: in Boston, channel 5.1 is the regular "WCVB" ABC lineup, and 5.2 is a nostalgia channel that replays 50's sitcoms. Would WCVB have to give up 5.2 if it moved to another stations' transmitter?

I guess what I'm really asking is "How many 'old' TV signals can fit in a 'new' signal?"

Bill

Reply to
Bill Horne

VHF spectrum in general is very undesirable because of the required size of antennas.

The DoD generally speaking does not give up spectrum unless the White House tells it to.

Not correct. That is where most stations that move to VHF will be ending up. A small number of stations ended up on VHF low-band -- usually but not always on their old channel assignments. This spectrum remained part of the broadcast television service in exchange for allowing channels 52 and above to be auctioned off to wireless companies (and MediaFLO) in the last round of spectrum reallocation. The FCC lacked statutory authority to do what they're doing now, so they had to keep enough spectrum in the broadcast service in order for transitional digital and legacy analog stations to operate up to the switchover. There are new TV stations being built in fairly large markets on VHF-low channels simply because that's the only place they can be put any more.

No. However, they do give up *bandwidth*, which they can make up for either by dropping multicasts or by increasing the compression on their existing services. There are some DTV stations in the Los Angeles market with 10 (very poor quality) subchannels.

-GAWollman

Reply to
Garrett Wollman

VHF channels are still around. But no major station in an urban market wants them. WHDH-TV "7" tried to stay on 7 at the DTV transition but a day or so later gave up the idea and moved back to its "transitional"

  1. Turns out that a) not many people have VHF antennas any more, and probably more importantly, b) the FCC's new DTV power limits were far lower than analog, and turned out to be inadequate. UHF power limits were higher and worked better in practice, since a majority of OTA viewers were using indoor antennas. The FCC's rules were predicated on the same 30-foot-up outdoor antenna that the 1950s rules used, and since TVs are more sensitive nowadays, lower power would be okay with the same antennas... but instead, everyone had already moved to crappier antennas. Must Carry, however, is predicated on the FCC's curves, so preachervsion (like WWDP) doesn't care. And in rural areas that never had cable, high-up outdoor antennas still exist, so stations like WMUR and WENH (both in NH) stay on high VHF. Low VHF (2=6) is even rarer.

Nobody wants VHF any more -- mobile is all UHF; "beachfront property" is the UHF-TV spectrum. So-called "5G" is really undefined, but there's talk about using millimeter wave frequencies that hardly penetrate paper, let alone trees. I think that's silly for mobility... but do watch for "WiGig" devices on 60 GHz to become more common soon.

There's always pressure on them to give up some of their holdings, but

225-400 has a lot of aircraft use, and they're naturally reticent to give much if any up. I forget if the NTIA report found anything there.

VHF-low is still available for broadcasting. I think one station in Vermont uses it, for instance. But it's pretty sparse. However, the audio channel of analog TV-6 is FM at 87.75, and low power TV stations can stay analog, so there are some virtual-FM stations operating as LPTVs with no video carrier. Of course there are also pirates on 87.7...

If there's no HD, six or more can share a carrier; "68" in Boston has six streams at once, including both HSN and QVC. Two HDs can share a carrier if they compress to mediocre sorta-HD. It has around 20 Mbps to share, and good HD IIRC typically takes around 14-16 Mbps.

Reply to
Fred Goldstein

But does the over-the-air coverage pattern, so to speak, really matter that much to many of the broadcasters these days? As long as they meet FCC requirements to "serve the area" (term used loosely) well enough to be able to get into the various mandated "cable shall carry" deal, they'll still be printing money.

We had one in NYC that did the same. I'm not physcially there right now to jog my memory, but it was something like two 480i video programs and... 8 other channels that had a stationary or slow moving video image (basically just the station ID card) and playing audio.

- one of them was the NOAA weather broadcast...

But that does get me to a related question. Since with PSIP the "station channel" has no real relationship to the frequency, couldn't (for example) "channel 4" and "channel 21" both be using VHF frequency 7, with one of them tagged (in background, again so to speak) as 7-1 and one as 7-2, and with one having a good quality 720p and one a functional 480i ?

Reply to
danny burstein

The "VHF Spectrum" Fred referred to is the group of channels I had suggested might be made available for "5G" data or other cellular-related use: he was pointing out that cellular providers don't like VHF because the wavelengths, and thus the antennas, are too long for use in compact cellphones.

Shorter wavelengths means shorter cellphone antennas, which means that the Low-VHF spectrum is being shunned by cellular licensees: a consideration which I had not thought of.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Horne

The other problem is bandwidth. TV channels are 6 MHz wide, and the whole VHF range is not all that big. So if there is some pressing need for mobile access to cat videos in higher resolution than can be provided in 4G LTE, then it will no doubt need wider channels. That again points to higher frequencies.

Reply to
Fred Goldstein

Nominal (per FCC contour maps) coverage matters if a station wants must-carry. Bear in mind, though, that must-carry is normally only invoked by stations that aren't particularly desirable. A station may choose to either invoke must-carry, in which case cable doesn't pay it anything, or it can demand payment per subscriber. The big network stations are demanding ever-higher payment -- that's why TWC briefly dropped ABC in New York a couple of years ago. (ABC usually requires cable to pick up a *bunch* of channels in a package, including the ridiculously-expensive ESPN, just to carry the local station.)

DTV can include a mix of different resolutions in its mulitplex. So it's quite common to have one 1024i or 720p full-HD stream (say, "5.1") eat most of the capacity, while 2 Mbps or so is given over to a 480i SD stream (like "5.2"). With the incentive auction, they're encouraging stations to share transmitters with different owners (like "5.1" and "7.1" on the same transmitter).

Reply to
Fred Goldstein

True for NCE (non-commercial educational stations.

47 CFR 76.55 Definitions applicable to the must-carry rules. (a) Qualified noncommercial educational (NCE) television station. (b) Qualified local noncommercial educational (NCE) television station.
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47 CFR 76.56 Signal carriage obligations (a) Carriage of qualified noncommercial educational stations.
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NCE stations do not have retransmission consent rights.

However, full-power commercial stations have must-carry rights throughout their Designated Market Areas (subject to numerous exceptions). DMAs are defined by Nielsen Media Research and do not correspond to FCC contour maps. DMAs usually follow county lines but some large counties (e.g. San Bernardino County California) are split between two DMAs.

47 CFR 76.55 Definitions applicable to the must-carry rules. (c) Local commercial television station.
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47 CFR 76.56 Signal carriage obligations (b) Carriage of local commercial television stations.
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Full-power commercial stations also have retransmission-consent rights.

47 CFR 76.64 Retransmission consent.
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True for Commercial stations. However NCE stations do not have retransmission consent rights.

Neal McLain

Reply to
Neal McLain

Well, not really shunned. There's just been no opportunity to license that spectrum for cellular. The older IMTS (pre-cellular wireless telephone) systems operated at 450 MHz or so. There is also the problem of substantial man-made noise in the VHF band.

The incentive auction process will free up some spectrum at 600 MHz for wireless. There's an extensive discussion of issues such as filtering and antenna bandwidth in the technical appendix to the FCC order regarding the incentive auction. (FCC 14-50 Report and Order in GN Docket 12-268).

"Modern research is looking at much higher frequencies for wireless. We already have Wi-Gig (60 GHz). People are proposing using millimeter waves for commercial wireless."

"Over 20 GHz of spectrum is wait> The other problem is bandwidth. TV channels are 6 MHz wide, and the

Right, as the quote above from Rappaport et al. points out, if you want GHz of bandwidth, you have to go to much higher frequencies. Wi-Gig claims data rates up to 7 Gbps. But, as I understand it, the Wi-Gig systems deployed today can only reach about 4.5 Gbps. (Only 4.5 Gbps!) But, that is in a 2 GHz+ bandwidth channel.

Chuck

***** Moderator's Note *****

The IMTS system used both the 150 MHz high-VHF band, and the 470 MHz UHF band. There was also an older manual system, called "MTS", which operated in the 40 MHz region.

The UHF units were only for IMTS, but VHF IMTS mobile phones could be used in areas that still had only manual service.

Bill Horne Moderator

Reply to
Charles Jackson

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