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>> first off, david donovan, and secondly, michael call breeze. mr. call breeze, what is a spectrum? >> guest: well, much more commonly known as the public airwaves. it's really not a tangible thing at all, but the electromagnetic properties of the earth's atmosphere which allow the transmission of radio waves, and we call it the spectrum because it's a spectrum of frequencies that can carry, you know, basically different waves with different propagation characteristics. so some are high-frequent went si waves that carry a lot of information but not through walls or trees or over very long distances, and then there are low frequency bands such as

those used by television which are considered the beach front, the very best, because those frequencies carry radio signals, you know, through multiple walls, through trees and in rural areas over very long distances. so it's a set of frequencies that are useful for communicating, and it's all owned by the american people as kind of a public resource. >> host: david donovan, anything to that definition you would like to add? >> guest: no, i think that's essentially correct. it started with the sinking of the titanic of all things. wireless communications have been important in this country. and through the department of commerce and in certainly since the 1920s and the federal communications commission, you have the government, a government entity that has been established to examine uses and to set up a licensing structure which will allow certain businesses to use certain parts of the spectrum for certain

things. federal government use and military use, of course, is still controlled due to the fact that the department of commerce and the independent radio advisory committee, but the commercial side of the business be it television, radio or cellular telephones is regulated through the fcc. >> host: when was the spectrum discovered? >> guest: the spectrum was discovered, frankly, when the first person opened their mouth and uttered the spoken word. it is the ability to transmit and send information over a frequency in which can be heard by the human ear. as you move higher up in frequencies we, of course, as human beings may not be able to hear them, but you can develop devices that are capable of listening, hearing and transmitting it back into sound waves and in frequencies which we can hear. so it has been there, and it has been commercially looked at probably since around the turn of for century. >> host: is the spectrum finite,

michael? >> guest: well, it's, that's an interesting question because it is finite in terms of the number of frequencies because when you get beyond the radio spectrum, in other words, when you get into, you know, ultrahigh frequency, you're starting to get into other types of, you know, of electronic airwaves such as x-rays and gamma waves and light, invisible light. that's all part of the same spectrum. so what we're talking about is a very tiny part of the spectrum that's useful for radio communication that can carry digital bands. >> host: and we're talking about sound and radio here, but the spectrum always carries pictures. >> guest: absolutely. >> host: all spectrum, everything on the spectrum is wireless, correct? >> guest: correct. >> host: well, we found this crazy quilt online, and this is

put out by the commerce department, and this is kind of a visual map of what the spectrum is. now, this large section here is devoted to am radio, and these sections here that you see, these blue ones, are all broadcast tv. they seem to have a lot of the spectrum, is that correct? >> guest: well, they do although i think as i said that chart is logarithmic, so it actually overstates in terms of a picture what the actual amount is. for example, in the beach front spectrum that michael has referred to -- >> host: and, again, why do they call it beach front? >> guest: well, that is the area of spectrum, and there's actually debate about that, in which you're using spectrum which has fairly good propagation characteristics to carry signals over fairly long distances. actually, the best area for carrying signals over long distances is your am band. the lower you go, the longer the signal can get out there. for video you'll see two

segments, vhf and uhf, and, in fact, in the '70s that band really blossomed in its ability to be used for video pictures. i guess the one thing about that chart that is somewhat deceiving only because of the way it's laid out is of that area, the 225-3.7 gigahertz, the so-called beach front that everyone has been talking about in washington -- >> host: and where is that on this chart? go ahead and point to it -- >> guest: well, like most things, i need glasses to see this. it essentially starts a little bit below channel 14 and moves up, starts somewhere aroun here and moves further up the band up to here. >> host: okay. >> guest: the thing is that television broadcasting actually are the beach front only has exclusive use of roughly 5.1% of the sctrum. now, in major markets we share spectrum, and you can see that on that chart. channel 14-20 with police

departments and land mobile operations. so all in all we use about 8% which means about 91% of that so-called beach front spectrum is actually used by some other entity. >> host: how is it licensed? how is spectrum licensed? >> guest: well, yeah, that's an important point because one thing this chart indicates is that everything is spoken for, so when you look at all of these bands of frequencies, there's, you know, as you said, a crazy quilt of different allocations. and these are just allocations. behind this are tens of thousands of licenses. and the way that works is that a whole lot of the spectrum, in fact, far more than a broadcaster uses is reserved by the federal government for its own operations. >> host: so what percentage of the spectrum is reserved by the government? >> guest: well, again, the thing about spectrum, it's like real

estate, location, location, location. so the federal government, i think, has roughly 40% of the so-called beach front of the spectrum that's selling for billions of dollars at auctions. and they're using very little of that at any particular place or time. the military is by far the largest holder of spectrum. you know, they want to have it in case they need it, you know, for certain -- >> host: and where on this chart would the military spectrum lie? >> guest: well -- >> host: throughout? >> guest: yeah, throughout. yes. >> host: and how would it be labeled on this chart? >> guest: it may not even be labeled or labed as government use. there are, they have fixed, they have mobile, they have radar capabilities. >> host: okay. >> guest: and, in fact, to michael's point i think one of the things -- you started whether spectrum is finite or not. it is finite to the extent that technology exists. so, for example, you have in the

five gig hert band which is way up at the far end of that chart -- >> what is a gigahert, what is a megahert? >> guest: essentially you're looking at a description, think of frequencies as channels almost like a checkerboard or as a ruler. and as you start down low, you're at the lower end of the band. as you move further up -- >> host: into killey hertz. >> guest: the further up you go, as michael indicated, you almost need line of sight to use those bands. so, for example, at a higher band military -- [inaudible] work quite well. military radar is used because it's line of sight that's coming back and forth from planes, what have you, flying overhead. but recently we have been able to as technology develops use

that part of the band which is nonpeach -- beach front, as it were. so, for example, you have unlicensed wi-fi services that share with military radar in the five gigahert band. >> host: why? why? why are are they in various locations? >> guest: well, actually because, you know, different frequencies are useful for different services and activities. so, so, for example, you know, a line of sight sort of activity like such as certain radars or what they would call backlog if you were trying to send a whole bunch of data almost like wireless fiber, you would want to use a high frequency whereas you want to use a low frequency

if you're trying to go a very long distance even though that would take more power, for example. >> host: where would an apple, apple company, where would the ipod sit on this chart? i mean, in the kiln hertz, megahertz, gigahertz, again, all over, and how much space would they be taking on this spectrum? >> guest: well, a lot of those frequencies used for wireless broadband the television stations which occupy from channels 2-69 gave up what we call -- not gave up, reallocated the 700-megahertz band. that's channel 2-69. that band was recently optioned -- >> host: right here on this map. >> guest: correct. right. that spectrum was rehall eau candidated -- allocated and auctioned and is now being used for wireless mobile video services, and essentially that's sort of the first step. there are roughly about 700, i

think it's 740, 790 megahertz of spectrum, channels of spectrum that have been allocated for wireless broadband services that have yet to be fully built and are intended to be built out in the next couple years. >> host: how much of this spectrum is unused or unclaimed? any of it? >> guest: well, that's very interesting because the conventional wisdom in washington is really this chart which looks like, you know, everything is being occupied. and certainly everything has been allocated for service and assigned with a license to, you know, some party or the other whether it's the, whether it's through a federal agent su like the military or the commercial spectrum has been -- licenses are issued, you know, for use. but if you go out with a spectrum analyzer and you actually measure the use of the airwaves, so we did that, for example, from the roof of our building in washington near the

white house, and this is probably the busiest set of airwaves in the country, and there was another study that did it in manhattan and in many other places, you find that actually even over the course of a business day in downtown washington or in manhattan that less than 20% of the beach front spectrum, the very best frequencies, are occupied on any given day in any given place. in the urban and rural areas it's single digit. so most of the spectrum is unused most of the time which is why using smart radio technologies to do this sort of spectrum sharing that david mentioned before such as what the military allows with radar in the five gigahertz band, that is really where we, you know, believe we'll find the greatest amount of new capacity that will be needed to meet the exploding demand for mobile broadband data like the iphone. >> guest: and we slightly disagree on this.

actually, we significantly disagree on this. for example, if you go into new york city and you say these are the channels being used in the beach front, for example, and television stations are on 24/7 and we are using all those frequencies, now, we also share frequencies with three of the television channels not used by public safety in new york city. now, depending on standing on a roof and putting out a monitor, you may not pick up all that public safety use because those radio communications may be relatively short, so it looks vacant, but it isn't. in addition, c-span, cnn, every local news operation are using those channels for wireless microphone communications going back and forth and reporting. depending on where you stand, and i know, for example, new york city was, i believe, on the other side of the river, you won't pick up those channels being used. so that's one piece of this. the other piece of this and i think it's really, really

important here, when you start looking at whether it's broadcasting or any other use, when you have equipment, for example, with television, consumers just bought $109 billion worth of digital equipment. the government subsidized 34 million dtv converter boxes. now, if i'm tuning to channel 20 and that's all over the air -- >> host: that's all over the air use of the spectrum. >> guest: if i turned to channel 20 right now and suddenly i have someone using channel 21 in washington, d.c., i will interfere with someone trying to watch channel 20. so when you talk about spectrum not being used or being used, you can't talk about that in a vacuum. you have to really -- it's ultimately a consumer issue, and you have to look at what equipment is out there and how it is functioning and how it is operating. because the idea of more

efficiency has to be -- nothing is more efficient if the net result is that the equipment doesn't work because of interference. and we can get very much into the engineering aspects of that, but it is a consideration that's often overlooked in these discussions. >> host: and we will. this is "the communicators" program on c-span. we're talking about the radio spectrum, the broadcast spectrum, trying to find out what it is and best ways to manage it. our guests is david donovan and michael calabrese, both are members of the commerce spectrum advisory committee, and mr. calabrese is a lawyer, and mr. donovan is also a lawyer and president of the association for maximum service television, so you get an idea of where they're coming from. gentlemen, recently on this program fcc chair julius genachowski was on as was marty cooper, the founder of the cell phone. and both had something to say about the cell phone and

efficiency. >> we're going to need to find ways to look at spectrum policy to encourage more efficient use of spectrum. there are policies like potentially secondary licensing of spectrum, more spectrum flexibility that will encourage the private market and lead to more efficient use of spectrum. >> but the solution to the spectrum problem is not redistributing the spectrum, it's not taking spectrum away from one entity, not even sharing the spectrum. it is, in fact, creating new capacity, in effect creating new spectrum are, and that potential, that process has been going on for 110 years, and the potential for increasing the amount of spectrum is enormous. >> host: michael calabrese, spectrum efficiency. >> guest: well, you know, marty cooper had a very good point which is why there's something we call cooper's law which is that 95% of the increase in the

carrying capacity of the airwaves over the past half century has come actually not from making more airwaves available for use, that's been a very small part of it. the biggest part has been by shrinking the cell sizes. in other words, reducing the -- reusing spectrum. but by -- so when you see, for example, a cell tower, you know, we used to think about cell phones, and this is still true particularly in maybe suburban and rural areas a cell tower covering many square miles. but increasingly, particularly in the cities, the companies now have to make these cell, the cell coverage areas much smaller because they're running out of spectrum to use. and so they can reuse the same frequency over and over again by shrinking the size of the area. and ultimately, we think given

this huge projected increase in mobile today that demand from -- data demand, what this will mean, you know, we think is that increasingly we're going to have to have smatter radio devices that use wi-fi, for example, much of the time. in other words, if you're here at c-span or if you're at home or if you're in a public place, you know, your communication should go over shared spectrum into the local wire line that's available. and only use the expensive licensed spectrum in the carrier-built infrastructure such as the towers when you really need the mobility or you don't have access to, you know, to a local network. we're going to have to use those kind of technologies. >> guest: right. and i think where our position on this is that we have just gone through from an analog to a digital transition, and like dr. cooper internally within

those frequencies that were allocated to broadcasting, 108 megahertz of spectrum or 25% of the spectrum that had previously been allocated to television was reallocated. we are doing more with less right now, and i think if you look at the architecture and the structure of your local over-the-air broadcaster, this isn't your father's or your grandfather's broad katzing system. broadcasting system. with digital transition we are able to do hi-definition television free, over the air. the second thing is we're able to do multicast services. in fact, since the digital transition there's over 1400 new video over-the-air programming streams that many come online, and in addition we're doing mobile as well. so if you're looking for high-quality video content, a point to multipoint service which is what broadcasting is, you have a tower, and it's reaching out to millions of viewers. and i might add, extremely

important, cable subscribers as well because cable systems in this country receive their signal through that primary over the air at the cable head end to retransmit it down the wire -- >> host: but cable users do not use spectrum, is that correct? >> guest: not quite. they see it in a number of areas. first of all, a significant number of cable subscribers have off-air cable in their -- capability in their home. and that includes cable subscribers for second and third sets, multigenerational homes, things of that nature. but where they also use it, and i'm not so sure it's readily apparent, is that signal for the most part comes in over the air from the broadcaster, and the same thing with satellite. it has become really important, and we spent about a year working with small cable

companies particularly out in the ex-urban and rural areas because it is almost too costly to connect those systems with fiber. and that over-the-air signal and the reach is absolutely critical for cable subscribers, and we worked very well with ncta and the american cable association -- >> host: michael calabrese, what have you seen in the national broadband plan that effects management and what do you think of the proposals that have been made? >> guest: yeah. well, there's some very good things in there. we thought there was -- well, for one thing there's an emphasis on reallocating spectrum that may be available for auction on an exclusive basis to companies like, you know, the verizons and the at&ts, you know are, for devices like the iphone. and, you know, i think that reflects also in part the government's desire to get some

auction revenue. >> host: and where on this spectrum map is that, is that real estate? >> guest: well, again -- >> host: the beach front? >> guest: the so-called beach front. >> host: back in this end. >> guest: yeah, there and up. the plan -- >> host: when you say up, do you mean higher up the band? this way. this way, okay, all right. >> guest: so, right. and, in fact, the plan specifically one of the most controversial things in the broadband plan is the recommendation that an additional 20 channels of television be reallocated for broadband. to move from broadcast to broadband even though we just, we just went through a dtv transition to free up 18 channels, the plan calls for freeing up another 20. >> host: and do you support that? do you agree with that? >> guest: yeah. in general terms.

but it's going to be, it's going to be very tricky, you know, to accomplish. one thing that i should point out that's very interesting about -- and this was another recommendation actually in the plan concerning, you know, more efficient use and more sharing -- is that, you know, those solid blue bands that you pointed to that represent, you know, television broadcasting, you know, over here, now, some of this has already been auctioned, but up here, it's actually not all allocated anymore to only broadcasting. be somewhat over 10,000 local channel slots for tv stations, but only about -- >> host: 10,000. >> guest: yeah, a little over 10,000 and only about, you know, 17% of those channel slots are actually used by full-powered tv stations today.

and that was because, you know, particularly during the analog days they had the space -- they had to space the stations out to avoid interference. and what the commission decided, the fcc decided a year ago was to allow all the unassigned channel slots, so, in other words, the actual majority of channels in a tv band, to be used on an unlicensed basis for what we were calling wi-fi or steroids. in other words, that where a channel frequency was in the tv band was not being used by a licensed station such as david's example of, you know, channel 20 is in use here in washington, that you could go on 21, for example, and use a very low-power device. but for the reasons he said, you know, the commission said, well, we've got to be very careful not to interfere with television reception, so we're requiring that these, that these unlicensed devices, these

wi-fi-type devices operate at extremely low power levels and also check a database to see what channels are available so that they don't interfere with viewing. >> host: david donovan, the national broadband plan and spectrum. >> guest: well, i think we sort of agree with dr. cooper and that is not -- spectrum management doesn't dictate essentially taking spectrum away from the existing use that's serving hundreds of millions of viewers in the united states. and if you begin to look at the broadband plan, i guess our perspective is this; we actually believe, as i've indicated given the developments of over-the-air television in terms of mobile, video services, we're part of the overall wireless architecture in this country. and, indeed, as you go forward and you look at the command or at least -- demand, the vast majority of that is to see video pictures.

which, of course, our architecture has already been built and is, indeed, providing. so we think we're part of this plan. we have some concerns, and the concerns are if you look very deeply at the broadband plan, it doesn't really go into a hard, strict inventory of how all this spectrum is being used. there are assumptions made, there are studies that input in, in particular one by the international telecommunications union which vastly overprojects what might be the demand going into the future. moreover, it doesn't consider a number of factors, particularly with respect to meeting that demand through a system that we have already. i think one of the things that bothers us is that there is a statement in the broadband plan that they want to take essentially 120 megahertz. that's essentially 40% of the

channels that are now allocated to television broadcasting they want to take. so think of it this way, you have a can of tennis balls, and i decided to reduce that can by 40%. can i put three tennis balls in that can? and the answer is, no, they will not fit. so you have to make some decisions. and the decisions are either you get rid of some of the tennis balls, or you shrink them all down. and if you look at their proposal at this point in time which is essentially to take every television station from channel 31-51 and say within 3-5 years you have to leave, you're talking over 670 television stations in this country. if you look at new york, that's 11 stations. if you look at los angeles, it's 16 stations. in addition, you have literally thousands of translators,

low-power tv and class a stations -- the small broadcasters -- that are often forgotten in this that, frankly, will have no home. once you take those channels away, where do you put them? i have to, in essence, take all those stations and try to squeeze them into a much smaller band. >> host: we're out of time but two final questions. we'll start with you, mr. donovan. reed hundt recently said in a speech that he thinks broadband is the new national medium. dodo you agree with that? >> guest: i think i disagree, and the reason is because for the last 50 years and certainly going into the future a point to multipoint distribution service which is what broadcasting is licensed on a local level has provided basic news and information. the economics of news generation in this country particularly with respect to reporters on the street are all premised, and if you look at the economics, it's all local television that is driving that, a