PUBLIC AIRWAVES ARE a precious asset that, like our national forests, deserve prudent stewardship. Careful management of broadcast spectrum, however, means more than just selling it off as quickly as we can.
Instead, it requires managing the airwaves, utilizing them to help America move into the information age, and maximizing their value in the long run.Since the advent of television, however, the entire portion of spectrum used for broadcast television - about 402 megahertz in all (better known as VHF and UHF channels) - has been allocated to licensees in different geographic markets in a highly inefficient manner.
A typical market may have three VHF channels (say channel 2, 4 and 7) and a few UHF channels (for instance, channels 20 and 26). Enormous gaps remain, scattered throughout the 67-channel spec-trum.
As a result, license allocations have been awarded in shotgun fashion throughout the spectrum range, and what's leftover looks like a pie that someone has cut slivers from, willy-nilly. The chunks remaining represent valuable airspace that could be profitably put to other purposes - if only they could be reorganized into a coherent, marketable whole.
By more efficiently managing the allocation of channels, we could clear at least 150 MHz for sale - 37 percent of the total - and in larger, more valuable blocks than the 6 MHz "slivers" that now remain vacant.
Among those more productive uses is "advanced television," including breathtaking new high-definition television and multiplexing of digital television signals. It's technology that promises to revolutionize television as we know it, with stereo-quality sound, movie-style picture quality and unprecedented viewing choices.
The problem is, nobody knows whether consumers want advanced television, or what forms it will take . Our challenge is to create an environment flexible enough to accommodate the revolutionary changes that will soon be upon us. To do so, we must "move" the existing allocations of television channels to reorganize the entire spectrum in a more efficient and profitable way.
The Telecommunications Reform Act permits the FCC flexibility to allow broadcasters temporary use of 6 MHz of open spectrum to begin simulcasting their existing programming in both conventional and new digital formats.
True, broadcasters would, temporarily at least, have two licenses at their disposal - one for the conventional analog, the other of digital simulcasts. But receipt of the second license would be conditioned on willingness to surrender the original back to the government for auction, once a substantial majority of households have converted to digital. The exchange process will allow the existing spectrum to be reallocated, with about 150 MHz freed up in the process.
Far from being a "billion-dollar giveaway" to broadcasters, their total spectrum would ultimately be compressed by 37 percent. The remaining segments would be reorganized to accommodate tomorrow's new technologies, and the remainder could be sold in more valuable, larger blocks, at much greater gain to the Treasury.