Trip

The rule is that if you are coming to the studio to view the public file during normal business hours, you must be allowed entry to be able to do so. You cannot be required to make an appointment. A non-commercial station who was concerned about their security received a fine over the issue. http://current.org/2011/02/fcc-fines-kcet-10000-alleging-public-file-access-violations/ - Trip

Paying what? Once a license is awarded, other than regulatory and renewal fees, that's it. Sprint doesn't spend billions of dollars every year on spectrum licenses they hold. What they paid for it, versus current valuation, is irrelevant. If I gave you a baseball card 10 years ago for free, then today it turned out to be worth millions, would you owe me money? Not to mention that TV broadcasters have piles of regulations on them that do not apply to wireless companies, such as E/I programming, public files, public access to the studio, local programming, indecency rules, etc. Those things aren't free. - Trip

Huh. I never noticed that before. - Trip

I took care of it. - Trip

I have a few minutes, so I'll address a few things here about ATSC 3.0. This post may contain opinions. Those opinions are my own and do not reflect those of the FCC or its commissioners. First of all, the original DTV transition was requested by broadcasters as a means of getting them into the digital age. Each broadcaster was assigned a second channel with the understanding that at the end of the transition, they would relinquish one of the two and the TV band would be shrunk by about 100 MHz, some of which is now found as Bands 12, 13, 14, and 17, among others outside the US. Since that spectrum shrinkage would result in auctions and became Congressionally mandated, money was available to pay for the voucher program. The 600 MHz auction envisions buying out some TV stations and moving the remainder to lower channels to clear the top ones for auction. Congress has not mandated a transition to ATSC 3.0 as part of this, and it was not requested by broadcasters like the original DTV transition, which is also why there is a reimbursement fund for broadcasters that did not exist in the DTV transition. Combining a move to ATSC 3.0 would increase the cost to government, not decrease. As such, any transition to ATSC 3.0 is going to be voluntary, and on the stations' dime. There will be no second channels involved; private agreements between broadcasters will make any transition to ATSC 3.0 happen. Imagine, for a moment, that you have three stations, A, B, and C, all currently broadcasting in ATSC 1.0. As the transition starts, station C converts to ATSC 3.0. Its programming is now aired on A and B. C, meanwhile, carries the programming of A and B in ATSC 3.0, so a viewer who converts to ATSC 3.0 can get all of the programming on both. The added efficiency of ATSC 3.0 makes this possible, as long as we're not talking about 4K, and just existing HD standards. Then, after a while, a significant number of people have the receivers. Station B now converts to ATSC 3.0 as well. Some of the subchannels from all three disappear, but the main streams from stations B and C now also appear with the programming of A on A's signal. Meanwhile, A's programming is carried on B and/or C in ATSC 3.0, and new services on ATSC 3.0 can begin. Finally, when you get almost everyone watching ATSC 3.0, now you convert A, and everyone is in ATSC 3.0. Another note is that if you've used the HDHomeRun receiver, I suspect something like this is envisioned as the converter box of the future. Essentially, you would have your antenna hooked to a receiver near the antenna, then apps either on a smart TV or smart device like a Roku or smart phone in the home would be able to stream the programming from the receiver. This would eliminate the need for a box at each set, assuming the set has smart functionality. None of this addresses your original question about 4K though. The short answer is, we don't know. Personally, I don't find 4K to be very impressive in the way HD was over SD, and I don't think most people will think so. Where ATSC 3.0 will be important is in providing more content in the existing SD and HD formats and, potentially, transmitting to mobile devices. The auction may reduce the number of stations overall but if the transition occurs, it won't be a major obstacle, I don't think. If anything, it will allow stations to replace any lost TV stations with additional programming through increased capacity in the long term. - Trip

It's not moving the goalposts, it's addressing the entirety of your opinion. You state that people should avoid the fee through BYOD, but then say return shipping will be free when needed. I have, indeed, paid return shipping on damaged merchandise from other vendors, so the point is valid. Moreover, subsequent posts pointed out exactly why one might wind up wasting vast amounts of time and money trying to choose a device through the mail, and you have not addressed what those people are supposed to do. By your logic, users of phone support or live chat should also pay a fee any time they use them, because if you didn't need support, Sprint wouldn't need call centers. People who buy devices from Sprint should pay a fee, too, because if you simply bought your device elsewhere, Sprint wouldn't need warehouses. And don't forget adding an extra fee if you happen to connect to a tower with high rent, because if you simply stayed out of that area, Sprint wouldn't need a tower there. At some point, you can demolish the entire company down to nothing this way, or nickel and dime people until they jump ship. Having call centers, warehouses, and towers is part of doing business, and so is having stores. Just because you do not like stores and have an uncanny ability to know in advance which device will be right for you before you hold it in your hand and try it out, does not mean that most or even many people agree with you, and does not make them problems. - Trip

The FM rules are very different from the TV rules. The DTV transition did away with the TV distance separations that still rule FM and replaced it with the OET-69 method I described above. It also allows stations to negotiate to accept interference either for a price or for mutual benefit. Or if a station is applying for a new facility, as long as it doesn't cause more than 0.5% interference, if it receives interference, it is assumed to accept that interference by default. (And for the record, even FM isn't strictly distance-based. Aside from grandfathered pre-1964 stations, it is also possible to use contour protection to short-space stations closer than the minimum distances so long as there is a location where the allotment would be fully-spaced.) As far as international spacing, the protections are different at the borders due to those agreements, and the propagation model on either side does not take into account lake effects on propagation. - Trip

As the resident TV guy, let me address the interference piece of this. TV interference is very tricky. I say that in the sense that the rules are as clear as mud and full of oddities. My work for the FCC is on software that does exactly those calculations. http://data.fcc.gov/download/incentive-auctions/OET-69/ This post may contain opinions. Those opinions are my own and do not reflect those of the FCC or its commissioners. Let me provide a link and then I'll explain how it all works in the link. I've used WYTV here, since it was brought up. http://www.rabbitears.info/contour.php?appid=1364510&map=Y TV station coverage is based on the F(50,90) service contour. That's the blue outline you see on the map. This contour is "projected" through a terribly complicated and at the same time ridiculously out of date method that was developed in the 50s or 60s. The short explanation is that you use the terrain between 2 and 10 miles away from the transmitter in a given direction, find the average elevation, compare against the transmitting antenna elevation, and then use a lookup table of that height differential along with the power (adjusted for the antenna pattern) and channel number to get a distance. (It's actually not that simple, but the full explanation would take several paragraphs and probably a few diagrams. That will get you pretty close, though.) Plot for that direction, then move to the next azimuth angle. Repeat until you've done this for the entire 360 degrees. If you are outside this contour, sorry, you don't count. (Growing up, I didn't count. That's why I hate contours.) If you receive interference, that's too bad. If you are inside the contour, now we start getting more sensible. You break up the area inside the contour into rectangular grid cells. A point is chosen as the representative point of each cell by using a weighted average of the census population points within each cell. (If there's no population, use the center.) Then you use the Longley-Rice path-loss propagation model to calculate the field strength at that point from the TV station in question. If you're predicted to be below the service threshold (for UHF, it's 41 dBuV/m + a factor that varies with frequency) then you are deemed to have no service, and if there's interference at that point, it doesn't count. But even that's not the whole story. The model isn't perfect; in some cases, it will determine that its own calculation is "dubious" and spit out an error code (kwx=3) along with its calculation. While studies have shown that calculation is generally correct, the FCC's policy from the time it started doing this in the 1990s through today is to assume the cell has service and ignore any potential interference stations. By the FCC's calculation, that cell is now immune to interference. So, again, if there's interference in the cell, it doesn't count. So now we've gotten to just the cells that are predicted to have reliable service predictions. You now do the same process in that cell with respect to each potential interfering station within 300 km of that cell. Now, that kwx=3 error may appear again; if a potential interfering station triggers that error, it's assumed to not cause interference. So, again, if there's interference in the cell (from that particular interferer), it doesn't count. Finally, having done all of that, the field strength of the station you're analyzing is compared against the field strengths of the interfering stations. As long as the station is at least 15 dB (depending) above the interfering stations, it is assumed to be interference-free service. And that 15 dB varies with a formula that makes the threshold higher as the signal gets weaker. Oh, and only cells with population are actually counted; interference only counts if it impacts people as defined by the census. And interference from LPTV stations doesn't count either. All of that technical jargon aside, now you can actually look at interference levels that TV stations have. According to the FCC's predictions, WNEO receives 3.52% interference, while WYTV receives 6.2% interference. For good measure, WFMJ receives 2.4% interference, while WKBN receives 23.63% interference. As for the specifics of the two that were mentioned: WYTV: 4.8% unique interference from WTTE in Columbus, OH. 0.2% unique interference from WGPT in Oakland, MD. 0.0% unique interference from WLNS Lansing, MI, CITS-DT Hamilton, ON, and WOUC Cambridge, OH. The remainder is caused by more than one of the above. WNEO: 2.9% unique interference from WDIV in Detroit, MI. 0.3% unique interference from WWAT-CD in Charleroi, PA. 0.0% unique interference from WXCB-CD in Delaware, OH. The remainder is caused by more than one of the above. Now you might ask, how did all of that interference come to be? In general, it's because stations agreed to accept that interference. In some cases it was because of how the FCC assigned the channels during the DTV transition, which was a best effort to give every TV station a second channel, but usually it's because it was accepted by the station in question. As to the original question in the first post... if desired I'll address that later. That was tiring to type up. - Trip

What? You mean you *gasp* don't want to buy the device, try it, then if you don't like it, pay return shipping and possibly a restocking fee, then repeat the process over and over, spending days or weeks figuring out which device you actually want through repeated trial and error? You clearly need more patience and to learn what "efficiency" is. - Trip

Free of charge? Because I'm trying to return something to Amazon right now and I am definitely paying return shipping. Amazon is definitely a place where one would BYOD from. I believe if Sprint closed all their stores right now, they would go out of business. There are plenty of people who cannot figure out how to do these things themselves, or people like me who prefer going to the store to have things done. (And Sprint encourages people to go to the store anyway; I called about activating a phone in December and they said the best way to get it activated was to go to the store!) It's not about impatience, I don't have all the time in the world, I just prefer working directly with a person on things I don't do frequently. If something goes wrong and I'm at a store, it's much easier to get it fixed on all accounts. - Trip

That doesn't help. When I activated my sister's Nexus 5X, they told me if not for my credit union discount, I would have paid the $36 activation fee. - Trip

I'm confused, what's dreaded about this? That money does go to the FCC and provides money to support connections in rural areas where the startup costs make service otherwise unprofitable. In my parents' neck of the woods, for example, if you look carefully at the microwave licenses US Cellular holds, one of their towers is called "PHENIX_USF". - Trip

Looks like it. It tries to keep you on Sprint eHRPD first, then has Verizon EV-DO as a second option. - Trip

That is correct. The PRL supports this behavior. - Trip

Well, it tries to put you on Sprint eHRPD even if you are 1X roaming from Verizon, but if it can't find the Sprint eHRPD, it does appear that it now permits Verizon EVDO. - Trip

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/4085-current-sprint-prls/page-36&do=findComment&comment=466837 - Trip

Okay, so here's what I'm seeing. First and foremost, a massive increase in EV-DO roaming. It looks like Verizon EV-DO. In Geo 4, SI Wireless is added as a roaming partner. In Geo 8, Standing Rock Telecom is gone. In Geo 11, the nTelos eastern market is gone. SI Wireless is added as a roaming partner. In Geo 14, SI Wireless is added as a roaming partner. The SID list I have has 4305 and 4307 as SI Wireless, which is why it's listed. 1X and EV-DO, by the way. - Trip

I'd be glad to try to dump it out if I knew how to do so with my S5. - Trip

If I knew how, I would do it myself. I have 55051 now. - Trip

If someone dumps 55051, I'll be glad to analyze. - Trip

Just shoveled another foot or so out of the driveway. Took about an hour, with my sister-in-law's help. - Trip

Just went out and shoveled an inch or two of powder out of the driveway. I'll probably do it again right before bed. Not sure I'll want to go out in the wind tomorrow but I might try at least... - Trip

Harrisburg, VA? I know where that is, about a 5 minute drive from my parents house. It's an intersection with a handful of abandoned buildings. I'm not opposed to lots of snow, but I don't want a power outage. Ready for it just in case, though... - Trip

What's more interesting (to me, at least) is that Alabama's PBS service has a TV station on Mount Cheaha, and while most TV stations are licensed to a "community" (featuring people, businesses, etc.), somehow WCIQ is licensed to "Mount Cheaha State Park, AL". - Trip

I'm in Alexandria and work in DC. I went to Lowe's for supplies yesterday right as the flurry was starting. It was a very treacherous drive home, since the roads weren't treated. I'm tentatively planning to work from home tomorrow so I don't have to be out in it. - Trip