The bill has had its twists and turns, but the Obama administration should have passed the delay to the DTV transition in the US by the time you have read this issue, after a second bill was introduced which will require a simple House of Congress majority. The previous attempt last week required a two thirds majority which was just missed 258-168.
As a result the US will be the only country to date that has managed to bungle its digital TV transition from analog to digital, although to be fair not many countries have actually switched off analog signals, though quite a few introduced digital systems in parallel with analog far earlier, and provided incentives to switch, so have less of a tough problem. A number of changes have been made to the bill, to take in criticisms made in the failing of the last one, and the coupon program may issue coupons which don’t expire this time, and the bill may allow some stations to switch off analog if they choose.
The analog switch off date will now move from February 17 to June 12, if the switch is agreed. Currently there are just 1.8 million households waiting for coupons, and in some cases this was caused by applying for coupons too early, before shops stocked proven equipment, and the coupons then expiring. The House has just voted another $650 million of cash to pay for coupons, and although this is likely to be overkill, with numbers as high as 6.5 million homes requiring digital converters being cited by research companies, we’re pretty sure all that money will be used up somehow, given that many homes may find they need converter boxes for analog TVs which are second TV sets in pay TV homes.
The 3.3 million vouchers that are currently requested at the 1.8 million households already on a waiting list would only take up some $132 million of that money. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has said it will put a new boss in charge of the coupon program.
There will still be some resistance to the new bill but the only company that is likely to lose out is Qualcomm’s MediaFLO, which had wanted to begin marketing its service nationwide on February 18th using the freed spectrum. It had asked for the FCC to grant exceptions to nine TV stations in Boston, Houston, Miami and San Francisco markets, to be allowed to continue on schedule and stop broadcasting on February 17th as planned. It could probably achieve this end by giving those broadcasters incentives to opt for the earlier switch off date without grabbing any more anti-Obama headlines, so we expect that to happen quietly, depending upon the exactly wording of the bill which passes.
Qualcomm reckons its has spent hundreds of $millions preparing those and other markets for launch on February 18th.
MediaFLO needs to be up and running sooner rather than later so that AT&T and Verizon see MediaFLO as a nationwide service immediately and begin promoting it at last. Qualcomm has quietly hinted in the past that it would also ‘buy in’ lots more content which requires up front payments. It may well have contractually committed to this content and be stuck with the fees from February onwards.