There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of plans to unleash unlicensed devices into the cracks between television stations. America’s leading LPTV association takes it several steps further, calling the FCC’s standards “arbitrary and irrational.” The basic problem is what CBA calls an apparent assumption that LPTVs will be operating in the digital platform, when it above all agencies should be aware that this is NOT the case.
Many will remain in analog well past the 6/12/09 deadline for full power television, and due to the characteristics of analog v. digital broadcast, will need greater protection from unlicensed devices than will digital stations. It specifically asks the FCC to put lower the power limit on a device by 9 dB for an upper first adjacent channel and by 14 dB for a lower first adjacent channel when minimum mileage separations are not met. CBA says other steps need to be taken to account for the technical realities of analog broadcast.
RBR/TVBR observation: The NAB and MSTV have been trying to work with the tech companies that want to get spectrum devices on the market, but with a controlled rather than a wild wild west approach. We are not engineers, but the fact that CBA feels that its established broadcast service has been completely ignored is just another piece of evidence that the FCC may be responding more to techco lobbying than the facts of science.
