We can understand US President elect Barack Obama wanting to undo pretty much anything which the prior administration and its FCC committed America to, but we sense that to attempt to delay the digital switchover in the US much beyond the existing February 17 deadline could backfire.
Any delay longer than 90 to 120 days would harvest legality challenges from companies desperate to get on with using their spectrum. Some might seek discounts or rebates from the FCC. For example, we’re not sure how Qualcomm feels about the new president, and we’re sure than no major corporation wants to upset the incoming president, but every day it waits to broaden the scope of its MediaFLO operation (which requires the analog spectrum to be shut down), it opens the door to the rival ATSC M/H technology from broadcasters, allowing it to catch up.
Also public safety organizations this week asked President elect Obama to exclude spectrum designated for first responders in any plan to delay the transition to DTV.
The suggestion of delay has already brought different messages from AT&T and Verizon, one saying it’s fine, and the other objecting.
We think that Obama’s administration is going to be clearing up the previous government’s mess for some time to come and it can take either view, that it needs to start right now, or that it can have a honeymoon period blaming the previous administration, quite rightly, for many of the country’s ills.
Under the guise of increased competition the Martin FCC has been able to support big business, hand out favors to the mighty, and corrupt the traditional role of the FCC commissioners, by denying them the information they need in order to take decisions in the interests of the US public, and by strangling dialog and disassembling the internal FCC machine.
Recent revelations from the US Committee on Energy and Commerce about the way the FCC has been run, made it obvious that the FCC has, during the last administration, become little more than an extension of the presidential office. A 100 page plus report provided numerous cases of where the current chairman Kevin Martin, manipulated evidence, reversed report outcomes, hid the process of decision making, as well as holding back vital data from his other Commissioners.
Obama’s touch is likely to go a long way to putting this right and put the FCC back on track, with ambitious plans to make the US a broadband powerhouse. However there are two ways of going about such a plan. Martin would have it that it can be done be cow-towing to the major corporations. We suspect that Obama’s new man in charge of the FCC, widely anticipated as Julius Genachowski, will take a different tack and will wish to genuinely create competition.
Genachowski is expected to push forward with the Obama communications plan which he has already been instrumental in creating ‘ aiming for greater broadband access, open internet, network neutrality, competition and innovation, and media diversity.
Throughout the last 8 years we have seen attempts to reduce competition in broadband, stymie the open internet while talking it up, kill off the concept of network neutrality, undermine competition ‘ for instance entirely betraying investors in unbundling and CLECs and engineering an about face on broadband connectivity, where unbundled strategies have worked elsewhere. Media has been concentrated in fewer hands and only the courts stopped new media ownership legislation being foisted on an unwilling Congress.
In general, analysts expect the Commission to become more favorable to new entrants and non-traditional telecoms and media players, such as internet applications providers, at the expense of the big four cellcos and the major cablecos.
One of the key initiatives is to use tax breaks and the Obama ‘stimulus plan’ to create a twenty first century infrastructure across the US, including high speed broadband accessible to all.
It was no surprise that the existing head of the FCC said that the digital switchover should go ahead on schedule on February 17, concerned as he was about the consumer confusion that might be created otherwise. Now who’s fault is that confusion in the first place?
Obama is really only concerned that the $40 coupon program to buy digital converter boxes ran out of money while 1.1 million US homes are still waiting for them. We don’t think Obama is saying people need more time, either they have been well prepared for the changeover or they haven’t. The broadcasters have had years to prepare viewers. What he is saying is that for the want of a mere $44 million why shouldn’t the problem of these $40 vouchers be solved. Given how rapidly the Bush administration has mobilized itself to give $billions to the US banking and car industry, it should not be beyond the scope of the current government to fix this problem with Obama’s blessing, in the few days that it has left.