Broadcasters, Sprint Seek 29 More Months for BAS Transition
Parties involved in moving broadcast auxiliary service (BAS) incumbents from the 1990-2025 MHz spectrum band in the 800 MHz transition asked the FCC for 29 more months to finish the job. Clearing the band will let Sprint Nextel use the 10 MHz PCS spectrum license it gets in the FCC’s complicated 800 MHz rebanding order. The deadline is Friday, but many BAS incumbents remain in place.
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Sprint, the Association for Maximum Service TV (MSTV), the NAB and the Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE) signed off on the filing. Broadcasters use BAS for electronic news gathering. The filing cautioned that systems vary widely and are often highly complex.
“The Joint Parties have collectively spent hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours to anticipate, plan for and address the legal, technical, and logistical challenges inherent in the transition,” the filing said. “Despite enormous effort to conclude the transition and substantial progress toward completing the transition prior to September 2007,” the filing said a waiver is needed because of “circumstances beyond their individual and collective control.”
Broadcasters and Sprint cited significant progress of late. Nearly 1,000 BAS stations have inventoried facilities and equipment, and 59 percent of primary BAS licensees have approved supply and pricing plans for new gear. Sprint has spent more than $266 million to inventory more than 16,000 pieces of BAS equipment, including over 9,000 transmitters and receivers, 4,900-plus controllers, and some 2,000 antennas and antenna upgrades.
But more time is needed, the filing said. “Every stage of the transition -- from inventory, to competitive bidding, to contracting, to provisioning, to training, to programming, to installation and reconfiguration -- has entailed challenges beyond the control of the broadcast industry and Sprint as they try to replace twenty-five years worth of equipment in about 2.5 years.”