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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday April 15 2017, @12:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the thats-a-lot-of-incentives dept.

Deadline Hollywood reports that the U.S. has sold rights to use radio-frequency spectrum in what is called an incentive auction. Television stations now using those rights will be paid to give them up.

Some 175 stations will collect $10.05 billion for agreeing to relinquish 84 MHz of spectrum. And 50 buyers committed $19.8 billion, and will get to use 70 MHz. (The remaining 14 MHz will go to wireless mics and unlicensed use.)

A blog post by the Philadelphia Inquirer said that a group representing the broadcasting industry was critical of the plan, which gives the winning stations 39 months to change frequencies in a process called repacking:

The National Association of Broadcasters says that the 39 months is arbitrary and should be rethought.

"The complexity of this thing is beyond daunting," NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton said on Thursday. "It will make the switch to digital from analog look like a walk in the park."

Additional coverage:


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  • (Score: 1) by Trip on Saturday April 15 2017, @02:24PM (2 children)

    by Trip (1619) on Saturday April 15 2017, @02:24PM (#494418) Homepage

    Any station that's being moved needed to be moved for interference reasons.

    And the ten phases had a hard limit that the stations in a given market could only be spread across two of those phases to limit the number of rescans. So Boston is split across phases 4 and 8, for example, while all of Los Angeles is in phase 2.

  • (Score: 2) by tnt118 on Saturday April 15 2017, @02:35PM (1 child)

    by tnt118 (3925) on Saturday April 15 2017, @02:35PM (#494423)

    I still feel like something more is going on. I get that avoiding interference is intricate but if I'm going to be moved from channel 10 to 8, just so someone else can have channel 10 (at the same power) I'm fairly sure you could have just given them channel 8 in the first place.

    --
    I think I like it here.
    • (Score: 1) by Trip on Saturday April 15 2017, @02:48PM

      by Trip (1619) on Saturday April 15 2017, @02:48PM (#494427) Homepage

      What's the specific case you're wondering about? I can probably explain it.