“t’s time to take over-the-air television out and shoot it,” Steve Wildstrom writes for TechPinions. “You may have noticed that there’s a war over wireless airwaves. Electromagnetic spectrum is a finite resource and those that have want to keep, but many who have also want more. The pressure is particularly intense to expand the spectrum available for mobile data.”
“All the usable spectrum that exists is assigned to someone and all of it is jealously guarded. A great deal of it is controlled by government and we don’t know how, or even if, some of it is used. But prying it loose will be very, very difficult,” Wildstrom writes. “The richest block of spectrum available is being used for over-the-air television broadcasts. The more than 200 MHz of prime bandwidth assigned to broadcast TV should and be put to a better use.”
Wildstrom writes, “Why we are dedicating any spectrum to over-the-air TV[?] The fact is that relatively few people watch it. While there is some dispute over the numbers, it appears that about three-quarters of Americans get their television primarily or exclusively by cable or satellite, whether as traditional scheduled programming or content delivered over-the-top on the internet. Cable or satellite service is available to virtually all of U.S. households, and the relatively few exceptions are most likely out of broadcast range as well. Dedicating so much bandwidth to serve and ever-shrinking audience seems foolish… You need not be a very astute observer of th Washington scene to know that the fact that something should happen is no reason whatever to believe that it will. Still reusing all that underused TV spectrum is something worth dreaming about.”
Read more in the full article – recommended – here.
Cut normal TV and they “F” us another way. They’ll get us through broadband internet. We can never win in the U.S., they wi;; A:WAYS find a way to “F” us hard. Fact.
I think we should all try to keep track of what we watch. I get the local broadcast channels on my cable . . . and I would not want to be without them. For local news, nothing is better. And some of the programming is at least as good as cable. Why am I paying the cable people for QVC? I think we can make more informed decisions if we just keep track of what we watch and how long for a day or two. But getting rid of the broadcast channels is a loser IMHU.
One reason I am not poor is I do not waste my money on junk like cable/satellite television… my home made antenna works great getting all HD broadcast; combined with Netflix, I’m good… Other than cell phone companies, cable TV is probably one of the biggest ripoffs there is. Speaking of cell phone – maybe this Leap/Cricket thing is on to something with non-subsidized iPhones and no contract – got to check that out.
It’s cool watching TV on the iPhone or iPad on the go