Staffer Says Hill to Act on DTV Transition, Converter Subsidies
LAS VEGAS -- Congress will “push” this year to “get more certainty” in the DTV transition and the turn-off of analog broadcast signals, predicted Pete Filon, minority counsel of the House Commerce Committee. Speaking here at the CES, he said Congress will consider subsidizing converter boxes to display DTV on analog sets.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
What happens on Capitol Hill depends largely on what the FCC does on the digital transition, Filon said. He didn’t suggest what that should be, but he noted that subsidies would be up to Congress. Filon said the committee plans a hearing soon on the transition, including the results of a GAO study of the subsidies that speeded Berlin’s DTV transition and “whether that kind of subsidy might work” in the U.S.
DTV-to-NTSC converters will be “very low cost” even before the final DTV conversion, said John Taylor, vp- public affairs for LG Electronics/Zenith. Depending on the volume, he said, the cost could reach $50 per box by 2006 or 2007. One key concern, Taylor said, is if cable down-converts DTV to analog at the headend instead of passing it through. He said broadcasters and the CE industry want to be sure the DTV signal is passed to the home, where the boxes can down-convert it if necessary.
There’s been “a lot of progress” on the transition, Filon said, but he added that “many in Congress feel the transition has been going a lot more slowly than they had expected.” He said the analog spectrum is “desperately needed” by emergency responders and innovators.
But the transition is going much faster than most expected, said Rick Chessen, head of the FCC’s DTV Task Force. He said people “would have laughed” a couple of years ago at predictions that the transition would go as fast as it did: “The fact that we're even talking about what we're talking about is quite remarkable… This thing is taking off.”
Analog TV channels are “beach front spectrum,” Chessen acknowledged: “This is what wireless has been waiting for.” He said the lower TV spectrum would allow wireless to reach greater distances at lower power levels, as well as penetrate buildings and foliage more easily. He said the govt. revenue from auctioning the spectrum would be “great,” but it would be “dwarfed” by the economic benefit of opening the spectrum to innovation.
Asked if the 911 Commission recommendations for more spectrum for emergency responders has increased the pressure on Congress to speed the DTV transition, Filon said it has: “But there has been constant pressure from the public safety community for years… If the FCC doesn’t move, I think Congress will take it up. The spectrum has to come back, and everyone realizes that.”
Though not all subscribers take advantage of it, HDTV is already available to 90 million of 108 million homes passed by cable, said Dan Brenner, NCTA senior vp-law & regulatory policy: “That’s pretty close to ubiquity.” He also said cable in general is “not in the business of degrading the quality of pictures” because consumers will migrate to the best quality TV. It’s not necessarily willing, however, to carry every broadcaster’s multicast channel, regardless of whether it attracts viewers, he said.