trading were completely unregulated. senator gramm's wife was on the board of enron. i find it ironic that senator gramm went to ubs. because as you may know, ubi suffered one of the worst losses of any nature institution during the recentstitutio crisis tiered elastomer $15 billion. they had to be built up by the swiss government and i don't think his judgment proved to be very astute in my opinion. >> c-span 2, one of c-span public affairs offering. a roundtable discussion on broadcast frequencies and their potential use for the expansion of broadband in the united states.

our guests are michael calibrate and donovan. >> host: well, our goal this week on "the communicators" is twofold. number one, to learn what the spectrum is. and if you've been following telecommunications about car particularly the last couple of months you've heard a lot about the spectrum. so that's our first goal. our second goal is to hear some different viewpoints on how the spectrum can be best managed. and we have to just to introduce to you this week, both members of the commerce department spectrum advisory committee. her staff, david donovan and secondly michael calabrese. esther calabrese, what is the spectrum? >> guest: well, it's much more commonly known as the public airwaves. it's really not a tangible thing at all, but the elect trick magnetic of the earth's atmosphere allows the transmission and we call it the

spectrum because it's a spectrum of frequencies that can carry coming you know, different -- basically different ways with different propagation carried yours the summer high-frequency waves that carry a lot of information, but not through laws or treaties or for very long distances. and then there are low-frequency bands, such as those used by television, which are considered the beachfront, the very best because those frequencies carry radio signals through walls, through trees and in rural areas over very long to this. so it's a set of frequencies useful for communicating and it's all owned by the american people as a kind of public resource. >> host: david donovan, anything to that definition you would like to add? just don't know, you think that's correct. it started with the sinking of the titanic as all things. wireless communications have

been important in this country and to the department of commerce and certainly since the 1920's through the federal radiocommunication of the federal communication you have the government, the government entity that has been established to examine uses and to get a licensing structure, which will allow certain distances to use certain parts of the spectrum for certain things. federal government use and military use is still controlled due to the department of commerce and independent radio advisory committee. but the commercial side of the business, be it television, beer radio, be it solar is regulated to the medications. >> host: when was the spectrum? >> it was discovered when the first person to open their mouth and utterly spoke a word good it is the 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 use. so it has been there and it has been commercially liptak, probably since around the turn of the century. >> host: michael calabrese, is the spectrum finite? >> guest: well, that's an interesting question because it is finite in terms of the members of frequencies because when you get beyond the radio spectrum, in other words, when you get to alter high-frequency come you are starting get into other types, you know, other like traumatic airwaves, such as x-rays and in the ways 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 bits. >> host: and were talking about sound and radio here, but the spectrum also carries pictures. >> guest: all spectrum, everything on the spectrum is wireless, correct? >> host: well, we found this crazy quilt online by the telecommunications and the commerce department and this is kind of a visual map of what the spectrum is. now this large section here is devoted to a radio and the sections hear the juicy, these blue ones, are all broadcast tv. they seem to have a lot of the spectrum, is that correct? >> guest: well, they do. that is logarithmic, so it states in terms of a picture with the actual amount is. for example, when the beachfront spectrum that michael is referred to -- >> host: why do they call the beachfront? >> guest: that is the area of

spectrum. there's actually debate about that in which you are using spectrum which has fairly good propagation characteristics to carry signals over fairly long distances. actually, the best area for turn signals for long distances is your am radio. the lower you go, the longer the signal can get out there. for video, television occurs in the future segments as the vhf and uhf. in fact it's in the 70's with the development of uhf reception capabilities that be and 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 the way this played out out is of that area, the 225 to 3.7 gigahertz, the so-called each front that everyone has been talking about in washington -- >> host: where is that on this chart? >> guest: like most hings i need glasses. it starts a little bit below

channel 14 and starts somewhere around here and there's further up around here. the thing is that television broadcasting is the beachfront good boeing has use of 5.1% of the spectrum. in major markets, we share spectrum and you can see that on that charge. channels 14 through 20 with police departments and mobile operations. so all in all, we use about 8%, which is about 91% of that so-called beachfront spectrum is actually used by some other entity. >> host: how is it licensed? how is spectrum license? >> guest: 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, as you said there's a crazy quilt of different allocations.

and these are just allocations. behind these are tens of thousands of licenses. and the way that works is that a whole lot of the spectrum, in fact, far more than the broadcasters use is reserved by the federal government for its own operations. >> host: what percentage of the spectrum is reserved by the government? >> guest: again, the thing about spectrum assets like real estate location, location location, so the federal government has a think roughly 40% of the so-called beachfront of the spectrum that selling for billions of dollars at auctions and they're using are a 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: where on this chart with the military spectrum light? dose co-they are troughout. >> host: and how would it be labeled on this chart?

>> guest: it may not even be labeled. they have mobile, radar capabilities. and in fact, to michael's point, i think one of the things, whether you started with the spectrum is finite or not. it is finite to the point technology exists. so for example, you have the five gigahertz band, which is way up at the far end of that chart. >> host: what is a gigahertz, what is a megahertz and what was it a kh the? >> guest: kilohertz. essentially what you're looking at is a description as to -- think of frequencies as channels, almost like a checkable or as a ruler. and as you start download, you're at the lower end of the band. as you move further up in the kilohertz -- then you go up to the megahertz and gigahertz and the further up you go as michael

indicated, the shorter almost line of sight to use those bands. so for example, at a high your band, -- at five gigahertz for example is military radar that's used up there because its line of sight coming back and forth and flying overhead. but recently, we have been able to act technology develops use that part of the band, which is non-beachfront as it were for other services. so for example, you have unlicensed wi-fi services that share with military radar in the five gigahertz band. >> host: and so they're up in the gigahertz? >> guest: they are all over. they're propped in various locations. >> host: why? >> guest: why are they in various locations? test out different frequencies are used for different services and activities. so for example, for a line of

sight, sort of like activity such as certain radars or what they would call back all, if you're trying to send a whole bunch of data on the flaky wireless data, you would use a high-frequency, where you want to say 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, the apple company, where would the ipod sit on this chart? i mean kilohertz, megahertz, again all over and how much space would they be taking on the spectrum? >> guest: a lot of the frequencies that would be used for wireless broadband would be the television stations, which occupy from channels to through 69 gave up which we call an reallocated the 700 megahertz. that's channel 52 to 69.ers,

that band was basically optioned. right, these blue spaces. that spectrum was reallocated and auctioned. it is now being used for wireless mobile video services. and essentially, that is sort of the first that. they are roughly about 700 -- i think a 740 -- 790 make a hurt the spectrum, channels of spectrum that has been allocated for wireless broadband services that are yet to be fully built and are intended to be built in the next couple of years. >> host: how much of the 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 ng occupied. and certainly everything has been allocated for service and assigned with a license to, you

know, some party with the other, whether it's for federal agencies at the military or the commercial spectrum has been licensed or 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 come up for example, from the roof of our building in washington near the white house and this is probably the busiest that of airwaves in the country. and there was another study that they did in manhattan and many other places, it you find that even over the course of a business day in downtown washington or in manhattan, that less than 20% of the beachfront spectrum come of the very best frequencies are occupied on any given day in any given place. and they kind of excerpt and any rural areas at single digits. most of the spectrum is unused most of the time, which is why

you think by radio technologies to do this sort of spectrum sharing that david mentioned before, such as with the military allows with radar in the five gigahertz band. that is really, you know, where we believe will find the greatest amount of new capacity that will be needed to meet the exploding demand for mobile broadband data like the iphone. >> host: and we slightly disagree on this. for example, if you go into new york city and you say, these are the channels that are being used in the beachfront, 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 used by public safety and new york city. now, depending on standing on the roof and putting on a monitor, you may not pick up all the public safety is because the radiocommunication may be relatively short, so it looks vacant, but it isn't. in addition, c-span, cnn, every

local news operations are using those channels for wireless microphone communications and going back and forth and reporting. depending on where you stand and i know for example in new york city i believe it was on the other side of the river, you might pick up those channels being used. so that's one piece of this. the other piece of this and i think is really, really important here, when you start looking at whether it's broadcasting or any other years, when you have equipment that has been sold in the public has been consumed, for example, with television, consumers just bought $129 billion worth of equipment. the government subsequently 34 million boxes. if i'm tuning to chancel 20 and that's all over the air use of the spectrum. if i turn to channel 20 right now it suddenly has some amusing channel 21 in washington d.c., i

will interfere with someone tried to watch channel 20. so when you talk about spectrum not emus were being used, you can't talk about that in a vacuum. you have to really -- it's ultimately a consumer issue. you have to look at what equipment is out there and how it is functioning and how it is operating. to get 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. we can get very much into the engineering aspect of that, but is a consideration that is often overlooked in the discussion. >> host: this is the communicator's program on c-span. we're talking about spectrum, radio spectrum, broadcast spectrum, tried to figure out what is the best ways to management. i guess i david donnell bennett and michael calabrese. both are members of the spectrum community and mr. calabrese is also the director of the wireless future program at the

new america foundation. he's a lawyer and mr. donovan is also a voyeur 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, ftc chair julius genachowski was on as with marty cooper, founder of the cell phones and both had something to say about the spectrum and efficiency. >> we are 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 the spectrum, were spectrum flexibility that will encourage the private market family to more efficient use of spectrum. >> the solution to the spectrum problem is not redistributing the spectrum. it's not taking spectrum away from one entity. it's not even sharing the spectrum. it is in fact creating new capacity, in effect, creating

new spectrum 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: you know, marty cooper had a good point, which is why there something called cooper's blog, which is that 95% of the increase in the carrying capacity of the airwaves over the past half-century has, actually not run making more airwaves available for use. that's been a very small part of it. the biggest part has been by shrinking the file sizes. in other words, reducing the spectrum. so when you see for example a cell tower, you know, we used to think about cell phones and the sisterhood may be suburban and rural areas, the cell tower coverage many square miles, but

increasingly in the cities, the companies now have to make these these -- the cell coverage area is 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 data command from smart phones and from laptops and the fact that everybody wants to be mobile, what this will mean is we think increasingly we are going to have to have smarter radio devices that use wi-fi, for example, much of the time. in other words, if you're here at c-span or at home or in a public place, you know, your communications should go over shared spectrum into the vocal wire lines available and only use the expensive licensed spectrum and the carrier built

infrastructure, such as the towers, when you really need the mobility or you don't have access to a local network. we are going to have to use this kind of technology. >> host: and i think our position on this is that we have just gone from an invite to a digital transition. and like dr. cooper, internally within these frequencies that were allocated to broadcasting, 100 megahertz of spectrum for 25% of the spectrum that had previously been allocated to television was reallocated here at we are doing more with less right now. and i think if you look at the architecture and the structure of your local broadcaster, this isn't your father's or your grandfather's fist and. with digital transition, we are able to do high definition television free over the air. the second thing we're able to do is multicast services. in fact, since the digital

transition is over 1,400,000,000 video over the year program streams that have come online. and in addition, we are doing mobile as well. and so, if you're looking for high-quality video content, a point to multipoint service, which is what broadcasters who have a tower and it's reaching out to millions of viewers. and i might add, extremely important. cable subscribers as well because most cable systems in this country receive a signal through that primary signal that the cable head end to retransmitted down the wire. >> host: it gives users to not use spectrum. is that correct? casco not quite. they see it in a number of areas. worst of all, a significant number of cable subscribers have off air television capabilities in their homes. the gao said 35% of american homes rely off their television.

and that includes cable subscribers for second and third set multigenerational homes, things of that nature. are they also use it and i'm not sure it's readily apparent is that signal for the most part going to the cable head and constant over the year from the broadcast. in the same thing with satellite. it has become really important and we spent about eight year working with small cable companies, particularly in rural areas because it is almost too costly to connect those systems with fiber and that over the air signal in the reach of that signal is absolutely critical for cable subscribers. and we worked very well with ncta and the american cable association tonight sure that wasn't disrupted third >> host: michael calabrese, what have you seen in the national broadband plan that accepts management and what do you think of the proposals? guest wrote yeah, well there's some very good things in there. we thought there was -- for one

thing there was an emphasis on reallocated spectrum, that they be available for auction on an exclusive basis to companies at the verizon and at&t, for the iphone. and i thin that reflects also in part on the government's desire to get him option revenue. >> host: and where on the spectrum map is that real estate? just go well, again, the beachfront below 3.7 gigahertz. there and up. >> host: when you say up, do you mean -- higher up? this way, okay, all right. just go right. in fact, the plan specifically if you put on 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 went through the dtv transition to free up channels come in the plan calls for freeing up another 20. >> host: do you support that? do you agree with that? >> guest: ya, in general terms, but it's going to be very tricky, you know, to accomplish. one thing that i should point out that spirit interesting about and this was another recommendation actually in the plan concerning more efficient use and more sharing is the solid blue bands but she pointed to that represent television broadcasting, you know, over here and for this authority been auctioned to up here, it's actually not all allocated

anymore to only broadcasting. so tv broadcasting, there are some went over 10,000 local channels slots for tv stations. and only about 17% of those channel slots are actually used by tv stations today. and that was because particularly during the analog days, they have the 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 other words, the actual majority of channels and the tv band to be used on an unlicensed basis for what we were calling wi-fi on steroids. in other words, where a channel frequency in the tv band was not being used by a licensed station, such as david's example

of channel 20 at the news here in washington, that you could go on channel 21, for example, and he is a low-power device. but for the reasons he said, the commission said we've got to be very careful not to interfere with television reception. so we are requiring 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 they don't interfere with viewing. >> host: david donovan, the national broadband plan and the spectrum. >> host: we sort of agree with dr. cooper and that's it's not spectrum management doesn't get paid essentially taking spectrum away from the existing use of that 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 to the development of over the your television in terms of mobile, petition, digital services, that we are part of the overall wireless architecture structure. and indeed as you go forward and you look at the demand, what we said has been about the demand, the vast majority of that is to see video pictures, which of course are architecture has already been built and is indeed provided. so we think we're part of this plan. we support, for example, commerce and vouchers industry built because we have some concern 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 the spectrum is being used. there are assumptions made. they're a study said i've been put in particular by the total dedication to unit which vastly over projects what might be the

demand going into the future. moreover, it doesn't consider a number of fat or is, particularly with respect to meeting that demand to a system that we have already. i think one of the things that bothers us is very statement in the broadband plan that they want to take essentially 100 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 and i decided to reduce that can by 40%. can i put three and that can? the answer is no. they will not sit. so you have to make some decisions in the decisions are either you get rid of some of the sub time for you shrink them all down. and if you look at their proposal at this point in time, which is essentially just to take every television station from channel 31251 and say

within three to five years to have to leave, you are talking 670 television stations in this country. if you look at new york, it's 11 stations. if you look at los angeles, at 16 stations. in addition, you have literally thousands of translators, low power tv and a stations to small broadcasters that are often forgotten, that frankly will have no home. once you take those channels away, where do you put them? i have to innocents take although stations and try to squeeze them into a much smaller band. >> host: we're out of time, the two final questions. we'll start with you mr. donovan. reid hundt says he thinks it is the new national media. >> guest: i disagree and the reason is