Trip

As I said, I'm no longer responding to this discussion. However If you hate me so much, please do not respond to any of my posts going forward. - Trip

Now I'm looking back and I don't even know why I responded. That whole conversation is off-topic. News flash, politicians take positions that benefit them when convenient. Trying to argue things aren't transparent when they follow the transparency rules required by Congress seems disingenuous to me no matter who it is. I spelled out what the procedure is. Seems pretty transparent to me unless you never want anything to get done. - Trip

Then why did you say to Google it? Looking at your link, it doesn't actually link to any evidence beyond a piece of a report and order without context and an article not actually written by Barack Obama containing pieces of letters by him that do not actually support your argument. There is no date on the R&O piece at all, in fact. - Trip

You're the one making the claim. It's not my job to do your research for you. - Trip

And was it released or not? I believe it was not. - Trip

Although I am an FCC employee (albeit an engineer who did not work on this issue in the slightest), let me make some comments on this as this may clarify things. Please note this represents my personal opinion and is not reflective of the FCC. So, first of all, to all those who say things about how Title II is the big problem, I remind you that the when the court struck down the rules under Section 706, it specifically said rules like this would have to be under Title II to be enforceable. So absent the adoption of Title II, a bunch of lawsuits and nonsense would have followed and the new rules ultimately would have been struck down again. This just skips that whole part of the process. Second, there's clearly some misunderstanding about how administrative law works. The FCC, or any other agency, issues a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) which proposes a set of rules. It then solicits public comments, of which the FCC received more than 4 million, and uses those comments to formulate a Report and Order. So to people saying "we don't know what's in it," that's technically true, but the NPRM laid out where the FCC wanted to go with it. The comments then influence the process, and the R&O explains the response to those comments and creates rules based on those comments and the NPRM. More importantly, I could be wrong on this, but I'm not aware of any case where an R&O has been published prior to adoption, at least not at the FCC. It may be a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act to do so, I've heard that mentioned, but I don't know that for sure. In any event, posting a Report and Order prior to being voted on in this case would be something new that I'm not aware of happening before. Anyway, then the document is published in the Federal Register, and is usually available online as soon as it's sent to the GPO for publication in the Federal Register. 30 or 45 days after publication in the Federal Register, anyone can file a Petition for Reconsideration asking to have the rules changed having now had a chance to read them. The FCC will then take more comments, and produce a Memorandum Order and Opinion addressing those comments and making any adjustments to the new rules based on new arguments made in comments. So if they make some blunder and a firestorm of criticism comes back, this is the chance to get it corrected. After that whole process if people are still unhappy, then it goes to court. In the Incentive Auction (600 MHz) process, I've been working with the attorneys on the MO&O the past few months. We're most likely making some changes to the rules adopted there in order to address things that were unclear in the R&O as well as things that were brought up that hadn't been brought up before. This is the normal process. Third, I suspect that many people who are saying '332 pages of new regulations' don't understand what's in these pages of documents. Any R&O contains a section at the beginning that is very long and contains summaries of what was proposed in the NPRM and summaries of the various comments received. Then the FCC explains its reasoning and why it has made decisions it has made. The actual rules themselves are usually attached to the back before any appendices and are a small fraction of the number of pages explaining the decisions and citing legal justifications for doing so. The vast majority of the pages are explanation as opposed to rules themselves. Just look at the Incentive Auction R&O as an example. The first 329 pages are discussion, then pages 330-381 (51 pages) are actual rules, then the last 103 pages are appendices providing yet more explanation. So out of 484 pages of stuff, only 51 pages are actual rules, and many of those in the Incentive Auction case are technical rules about interference limits and things like that. So, yes, are there 332 pages to read to fully understand what's going on? Yes. Are there 332 pages of 'new regulations'? I would argue no. I may or may not answer any replies to this message, but wanted to get all of that out there. Hopefully it helps the conversation. - Trip

I thought he was leasing the spectrum from Dish, which is to say, Dish is getting paid for this deployment and thus doesn't care either way what is on it or whether or not it works. Or did I miss something and Dish invested in it? - Trip

I see this too from time to time when it's caught only a piece of the data (same bug that appears to be causing the oddball logging problem) but it usually resolves itself once it catches up and gets all three pieces (GCI/PCI/PLMN). - Trip

There are definitely places where 1X is the only option, particularly areas where 1X 800 is the only thing that works (rural areas, train tunnels, etc). If I see 1X only I don't even bother trying for data. In any event, I imagine it would be hard to find your way onto 1X-only on Sprint and shouldn't be a factor in these tests. - Trip

http://newsroom.sprint.com/news-releases/sprint-signs-agreement-with-radioshacks-lender-to-expand-branded-stores.htm - Trip

Enjoy the Caribbean! - Trip

But US Cellular FINALLY won a 5 MHz paired block in the market my parents live in. Huzzah! Now they don't have to cram everything into CLR. - Trip

Tower registration doesn't really tell you anything. I would argue that most towers in use by most cell companies are probably owned by a tower company like Crown Castle or American Tower. That Verizon is building new towers isn't a bad thing, but it doesn't mean that one of the other guys isn't having one of the tower companies construct towers for them. - Trip

No matter how much longer the incentive auction takes, it's still a faster path to new spectrum than something like eminent domain would be. First of all, the incentive auction is required by law, whereas eminent domain would have a not insignificant number of lawmakers screaming at the FCC (more so than are right now about net neutrality). Second, the legal challenges to the FCC over the incentive auction are a drop in the bucket next to what would happen if you attempted to use something like eminent domain. It would be tied up in legal challenges from every TV broadcaster for many many years. Third, I'm not an attorney, and I doubt you are either, so I don't even know if something like that would be legal. If this were communist China where the government just does whatever it wants with no recourse, I'm sure it would be, but we don't live in communist China. Net neutrality, controversial as it is, at least has some precedent in the form of existing regulations on other services like landline telephones. What you're proposing does not. Finally, the FCC is an "independent agency" but was still created by Congress and has its members appointed by the President. If Congress doesn't like something the FCC does, ultimately it can undo those actions. - Trip

Construction of thousands of new towers (plus their on-going costs like rent, power, backhaul, etc) plus thousands of new encoders for broadcasters would likely exceed auction proceeds. And that's assuming you don't want to kinds of redundancy that makes broadcast much more reliable than most other media during disasters. - Trip

I'm glad you're volunteering to fund the production and distribution of converter boxes, installation of new encoders for broadcasters, and construction of extra towers to fill newly created coverage gaps. Just as soon as you let everyone else know that you're taking on the billions of dollars in costs involved we can move forward. - Trip

If the signal strength had been cut toward New York, the link I provided would show it since short of physically replacing the antenna, the only way to reduce the power to New York would be to reduce the total power. In any case, looking at the NJTV website, it appears the complaints are from all four transmitters, not just WNJN. My guess is that something changed in the way the signal is being encoded, but without access to my tuner, I couldn't tell you what. There's plenty of ways that bad encoding could have broken something. - Trip

Not aware of any changes to WNJN. Until about two weeks ago, I had a TV tuner I could remote access at my grandma's house in Fair Lawn. Two days after she left for a two-month vacation, the computer it was connected to stopped responding. If it was still working, I'd have a look for you. Since you say the change was in August, my data covers that much. I don't see any changes in signal level during that time. http://www.rabbitears.info/tvdx/signal_graph/10343612/tuner1/WNJN - Trip

There has to be an empty channel between wireless and TV because the relative power difference between the two is huge. If you're near a TV transmitter (up to 1000 kW) then the TV signal will stomp on the wireless transmissions (up to 1 kW/MHz from the base station, I think, but usually much less, and not more than a few watts max on the phone side). The reverse is also true if you're far away from a TV transmitter; the wireless transmission from the phone will be so much higher in power than the received power level of the TV signal that the TV receiver won't be able to handle it. As for TV-to-TV, there doesn't necessarily have to be an empty TV channel between the two as long as the stations are geographically close together. In your area, WOOD is on channel 7 and WWMT is on channel 8 without issue. Where there is a problem is when there is distance between the two stations such that areas exist where one station will be more than about 30 dB stronger than the other, causing receivers to be unable to decode the weaker signal. - Trip

With a background in TV engineering and now working on the incentive auction for the FCC, all I can say is this: I have absolutely no idea what on Earth you are talking about. - Trip

Then go talk to your congressman about it. There's a sentence in the law which says "[n]othing in this subsection shall be construed to alter the spectrum usage rights of low-power television stations" which is interpreted to mean that the FCC can't protect them because they're not primary services but also can't force them off the air unless there is literally nowhere for them to go, which may or may not happen. The law also spells out that only Full Power and Class A stations are entitled to relocation compensation. Saying "it shouldn't be this way" doesn't change the facts on the ground. Minor note, the FCC uses the proprietary Nielsen DMAs, not TMAs, in its market determinations. Those DMAs are set by Nielsen, and not the FCC. I'm not arguing that you're wrong on your facts, I'm just saying that the way it should be (according to you; again, I don't think I should give an opinion given my position) isn't the way it is. - Trip

They're not being compensated, but are required to relocate or go off the air to clear the "recovered" spectrum and to accommodate repacked broadcasters. They will not be relocated as part of the auction and repacking process but after the fact, on an "as they can fit" basis. Call it what you want (and I work for the FCC so I won't share my opinion) but it is what it is. And if it's completely unacceptable (again, I won't share my opinion) then nobody else seems to have noticed outside of the LPTV/translator industry. - Trip

LPTV and translator stations are not protected in the auction and will not be bought. And in any case, many of the stations on that list are owned by Landover and DTV America, speculators who applied for licenses in the hopes of getting a waiver of FCC rules to do broadband services rather than broadcast services anyway. - Trip

So, wait, Sprint constantly screws up and would be out of business in two years, but if they bought T-Mobile they'd be the best company? Am I missing something or do those two points conflict? - Trip

I can definitely tell you that is not true. You're correct that stations which are not purchased in the reverse auction will only be compensated for the cost of moving, costs of which are larger than you might think they are. However, in order to clear out channels 38-51 (making 70 MHz available for auction) requires more than 250 eligible stations nationwide to be purchased as opposed to relocated. In North Dakota, sure, nobody needs to be bought. In most of the east coast, Great Lakes region, Florida, Texas, and California? You can't clear anything without turning off stations. - Trip