Why is it, wonders Free Access & Broadcast Telemedia, that wireless companies are free to use their spectrum for innovative new services while broadcasters are stuck in a highly restrictive regulatory framework?
According to FAB’s David Mallof would like to use LPTV spectrum for just such a purpose, as he noted in ex parte comments with the FCC.
FAB noted that most companies offering new wireless service over FCC –licensed infrastructure are forced to piggyback on other existing networks.
Mallof stated that FAB’s plans as considerably more ambitious, He characterized the company as “…a competitive, wireless new market entrant, stating that FAB is poised to offer innovative two-way and traditional free broadcast services to mobile (and sometimes ‘fixed’) consumers in top cities. Using a combined subscription-based and ad sponsor-based revenue model, FAB believes the FCC needs to play its traditional and pivotal role in promoting and enhancing a wellspring of new competition and entrepreneurial innovation. He remarked that other start-up entrepreneurs are unlikely to survive what FAB’s partners have suffered in threatened relocations and complex rulemakings over the last five years, absent also the freedom of technical flexibility to innovate. He stated FAB is active today with its partners in top metro markets in advancing its business plan, and expects to add more FCC-licensed cities in 2015/16.”
Mallof said service could be provided with far less of a capital investment than that typically made by traditional wireless companies, and that allowing broadcasters to enter the business would vastly increase the diversity of suppliers of such service.
He described current FCC policy as “licensing asymmetry” which stifles the ability of broadcasters to make the most of their spectrum, while imposing no such impediments on other wireless entities.
Finally, he urged the FCC to swiftly bring an end to the current uncertainty swirling around the entire LPTV business, noting that the FCC’s apparent path at the moment may be judicially unsustainable as well as inconsistent with the original intent of Congress.
He urged the FCC to cease its licensing asymmetry and grant all broadcasters technical flexibility to innovate, just as all Wireless Bureau and International Bureau wireless licensees are allowed to do today. He also called on the FCC leadership not to forsake entrepreneurship as a font of new competition and innovation, nor to presume that only ever-consolidating, established players are the key to America’s future.
Finally, he reiterated that LPTV licensees are a vital component of fostering localism and a diversity of media voices as enshrined in the Communications Act of 1934. He called upon the FCC and Congress to allow LPTV to thrive absent the repeated, ongoing uncertainty and increasingly complex rules the Incentive Auction Rulemaking process is generating. He also emphasized that the Commission may be moving in a direction not sustainable in any court, nor consistent with Congress’ original intent.
RBR-TVBR observation: It really is going to be interesting to see how much the LPTV community will be able to influence the path of the incentive auction.
LPTV is perhaps the smallest of all the interested parties in this proceeding. But as FAB indicates, it has some big ideas, including enough open-mindedness about the future to warrant including this story under our Internet Business News heading.
So can LPTV do anything? We don’t have an answer for that, but we are all well aware that takes but a microbe to bring down an elephant. Stay tuned…
