Because a few more broadcasters began High Definition Television (HDTV) trials this week, HDTV is in the news again, and the media is reporting the same old blather about it as before. There’s no HDTV content. The broadcasters are making an enormous speculative investment. Consumer HDTV sets are obscenely expensive, and if you get one, you probably can’t watch anything anyway.
Right now, spectrum in the US is fully allocated, and broadcast television has over 400 Mhz of the really sweet parts of the RF spectrum allocated to it. All of the PCS (personal communications services) technologies – cellular, paging, data services, and the rest – are crammed into about 200 Mhz of non-contiguous bandwidth. These bands are technically less desirable ones that are more expensive to build devices for, and are subject to far more interference.
In 2006, when the FCC requires that all broadcasters have converted to digital transmission and ended analog transmission, half of the spectrum currently allocated to broadcast television will be freed up. The FCC will then be able to auction and reallocate this spectrum. My bet is that most of it is going to go to new PCS uses.
As I see it, this is the real news behind HDTV. I sure like the idea of doubling the bandwidth for wireless telephony and data that could drive the cost data down low enough that it’s competitive with, and potentially cheaper than the same wired application.
How can it be cheaper? Without a wired infrastructure, wireless solutions have much lower initial costs than a wired solution. New wireless companies start up for far less capital than a wired company, so there’s more of them, and more competition. With less infrastructure to maintain, the cost for delivery of the services are lower. All this will drive the prices for the services down to a reasonable cost level, which we’ll all be happy for as consumers of these services.
The FCC also is permitting a number of data services that look a lot like PCS to happen in the remaining spectrum allocated to television broadcasters. As this happens, expect it to look a lot like cable companies that are transforming themselves from broadcast to data and telephony service providers.
Look for an absolute explosion of new services and companies offering wireless beginning in 2006. And don’t forget to track the FCC auctions carefully, http://www.fcc.gov/wtb/auctions/ since you’ll want to bid on some of that spectrum as it becomes available.
