Verizon Wireless CTO Tony Melone said this week that the carrier now believes that the best way of handling some of the expected demand for video on its new super-fast broadband network is broadcasting — that is, pumping one signal to many users simultaneously rather than millions of signals one at a time. If Verizon Wireless is thinking this way, my bet is that some of its competitor and would-be competitors are too. There's an obvious alternative: A thousand TV stations pumping video to mobile devices should satisfy much of the demand for on-the-go video and relieve broadband networks of what may be an uneconomical chore.
JESSELL AT LARGE
Do We Really Need A 2nd Broadcast System?
As much as I like its phone service, I’m a little miffed at Verizon Wireless. It has ripped off classic broadcasting icons for its current “Rule the Air” ad campaign. I’m sure you’ve seen the centerpiece of the campaign many times by now: a globe topped by a tower with lightning bolts coming out of it. To me, that says broadcasting, not cell phone and certainly not wireless broadband.
But I guess it’s nothing to get too worked up about. After all, most broadcasters left behind those kinds of images in the 1940s.
When I first saw the ads, I thought that Verizon just liked the retro look of the thing. But now I’m thinking that there might be something more to it.
This week, at a mobile conference in San Francisco, Verizon Wireless CTO Tony Melone said that the carrier now believes that the best way of handling some of the expected demand for video on its new super-fast broadband network is broadcasting — that is, pumping one signal to many users simultaneously rather than millions of signals one at a time.
“We’re working with all of our infrastructure providers … to develop the technology to incorporate a broadcast capability,” he said.
“[A] portion of your [spectrum] capacity would have to be allocated to this broadcast capability,” he continued. “We think that will be a solution to this problem down the road, that there will be a broadcast element to our 4G network that can then more efficiently deal with the live content.”
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It may not be broadcasting as we think of broadcasting — AM, FM and TV, but it is broadcasting. One to many.
Melone certainly doesn’t speak for the entire broadband industry, but his comments should give us pause. If Verizon Wireless is thinking this way, my bet is that some of its competitor and would-be competitors are too.
So, let’s recap the situation.
The FCC and its friends at the White House and on Capitol Hill want to dismantle or at least diminish TV broadcasting as an over-the-air service so that they can recover its spectrum and sell it to the wireless carriers for use in fancy wireless broadband networks.
Once they build the networks, if Melone is to be believed, the carriers may use that very same spectrum to create a broadcast service to handle bandwidth-hungry video, particularly live programs.
Other than a pay day from the spectrum auction, I’m not sure what the government gains then from its spectrum reallocation policy. Of course, the payday may be the whole point.
I understand that you don’t want to make too much of something said at an industry conference, but this whole idea of broadcasting over broadband should be explored and questioned by the policymakers.
The route the FCC has mapped out appears to be circular. Mobile ends up back at broadcasting, except that it’s controlled by a handful of carriers rather than hundreds of station owners.
In resisting the push to take more of their spectrum, broadcasters have been trumpeting the wonders of broadcasting.
In a written interview last January, broadcasters’ spectrum watchdog David Donovan said that broadcasting should be seen as a complement to broadband. “Our system, which is a point-to-multipoint system, is the most efficient way to distribute high-quality video content in real time.”
That’s what you would expect a broadcast lobbyist to say. It’s not what you would expect a broadband network provider to say in almost the same words as Melone did last week.
The inefficiency of using broadband for one-to-one streaming of video and audio is also evident in the trend toward pay-as-you-go pricing of broadband data plans. The more bandwidth you use, the more you pay.
The carriers have apparently concluded that it is bad business to allow customers to pay a flat fee and sit there watching TV or listening to music on their smart phones and tablets all day. Video and audio require way too much bandwidth.
Like Donovan and others have suggested, the best policy may be to preserve conventional broadcasting so that it can move ahead with its mobile plans. A thousand TV stations out there pumping video to mobile devices should satisfy much of the demand for on-the-go video and relieve broadband networks of what may be an uneconomical chore.
Perhaps Melone should cancel plans for a broadcasting component to his new broadband network. Real broadcasters, the folks with call letters, can handle the video and audio. No problem.
I have tried to maintain some skepticism about broadcasters’ mobile DTV service, but I am having a more difficult time lately. All signs indicate that this is going to happen. I fully expect to see some kind of service widely available by this time next year. The big question is whether the mobile device manufacturers will be able to keep up.
As broadcasters rush into their mobile future, allow me to suggest a slogan to encourage and inspire: Rule the air.
Harry A. Jessell is editor of TVNewsCheck. He can be contacted at 973-701-1067 or [email protected]. You can read more of his columns here.
Comments (19)
r small says:
November 12, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Broadcasting, using the airwaves. What a concept! Why didn’t I think of that?
It does make a broadcaster a little suspicious, this. As you said, back to the airwaves, but owned and controlled by a few broadband providers, not local stations. And, as Mr. Donovan alluded, broadcast stations have been pumping out high quality video and audio all day long for many decades now. They certainly know how to do it.
Ben Gao says:
November 12, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Broadband companies, very inefficient use of spectrum, wants more spectrum – and they meter runs the whole time your phone is on; meanwhile, all existing TV broadcasters could use part of their HDTV for Mobile HDTV and broadcast direct to these phones – FOR FREE! Why re-invent the wheel? Is the FCC & Congress that money hungry that we have to scrap our brand new HDTV’s just for cellphone / broadband bandwidth? How about you have either a dedicated Mobile HDTV tuner with an add-on phone, or a phone with a built-in Mobile HDTV tuner? No waste of spectrum that way!. So why should we give more money to the very FEW wealthy cellphone suppiers monopolies, when HDTV is free? Must not be the American way. Last time I checked, we were in a Depression, I mean people with depression in a recession, and we have less income, not more.
simon wilkie says:
November 12, 2010 at 1:59 pm
The Emperor (Telecos) has no clothes – good job, Harry, for bring to light the 25 year plus efforts (past and present) of Telcos, Cable and now the likes of Google to continue to privatize the public’s air wave – THE AIR WAVES BELONG TO THE PEOPLE OF THE USA. The cost of this process is clear; run away rate increases, elimination of local voices, weakening of competition, creation of financial hurdles to new entrants, reduced public service, speculative investment and warehousing of frequences perviously owned by the Public (see Aloha Partners), incremental transfers of more and more of the Public’s resources to the Private sector, creation of a situation where the public ends up paying to access their Air Waves by means of government auctions that cover wasteful spending practices with OTO funds/auction fees that are passed on to consumers (The Public) via monthly fees; i.e., the view gets taxed on the uses of the Public’s Air Waves. Shameful in so many ways.
Keep up the good work!
Sean OReilly says:
November 12, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Why must the spectrum be sold? The spectrum should be handled like mineral rights and leased. Once you sell, you lose control, Lease it and get a continual income source.
Gregg Palermo says:
November 12, 2010 at 3:50 pm
The airwaves have no value until someone invests (takes a financial risk) in them, so, no, “public airwaves” is nonsense. The airwaves are worthless until a corporations give them value. Besides, the whole scarcity argument is crazy: Show me a city where there are fewer TV stations than newspapers. Yet newspapers are unregulated and TV stations have this “public trust” nonsense thrust upon them.
Christina Perez says:
November 12, 2010 at 4:00 pm
The concept of public ownership of the airwaves is “nonsense?” Spoken like a paid minionl of the telecom industry — which is what virtually all of your postings here sound like to anyone who actually has worked int the broadcast biz. Shoo, troll!
mike tomasino says:
November 12, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Thanks Philly, those of us who have been around for a while know what Rustbelt’s story is.
Brian Bussey says:
November 12, 2010 at 3:58 pm
yeah, this reminds me of all the benefits associated with privatizing Social Security. Wall Street has been extremely silent on this matter once they took bailout funds to finance their bonuses. The plan will not work. For the Teleco’s to make a profit, the American people would have to get hosed. The airwaves are free for a reason. We have far and away the most democratic system of news and entertainment distribution on earth and in the history of mankind. Creating a caste system for info-tainment
on top of the wired one we already have is ridiculous.
Christina Perez says:
November 12, 2010 at 4:01 pm
well said.
David Siegler says:
November 12, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Wouldn’t it be great if there were a device that could receive all types of wireless signals. Then the appropriate service (broadcast, wifi, 3G, 4G, etc) could be used to deliver content taking advantages of the strengths associated with each service rather than trying to force services that are optimized for one type of delivery to accomodate all types of delivery. I would call it the Swiss Army Receiver.
george willingmyre says:
November 12, 2010 at 6:55 pm
It is possible to have all you outline in your email, simply by adding chips, which adds very little cost to a device.
David Siegler says:
November 12, 2010 at 4:00 pm
It occurs to me that the antenna would be shaped like a cork screw.
Jill Hatzioannou says:
November 12, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Perhaps mobile tv is the battleground on which over-the-air broadcasters reclaim the ‘valuable public service’ high ground by providing information to portable, battery powered devices FOR FREE in time of emergency. Harry, your position is well taken and tv broadcasters need to sign on. Philly, I think you are too harsh on Rust Belt’s comments. Making a sizeable investment and taking a sizeable risk is exactly what broadcasters have done, thus bringing value to the airwaves. Over the past several years that value has been mitigated by the fact that many in the audience receive that content through wired means. The advent of mobile revives the value in providing unwired service.
Christina Perez says:
November 12, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Just what Harry said. But here’s the sad thing: Broadcasters could have insisted that the ATSC digital standard work with mobile devices. Instead, it appears that engineers purposely and under orders came up with the standard that wouldn’t work for mobile applications… note that the European digital TV standard is much more tolerant of antenna movement and motion. This downgrading of ATSC happened because major telecom powers foresaw the possibility of destroying OTA TV, in my opinion, and the FCC was their complicit silent partner. This is the great untold story of digital TV. Imagine the leg-up broadcasters would have in the mobile market if ATSC were engineered to handle mobile. And don’t tell me it would have been technically unfeasible; that’s just not true.
george willingmyre says:
November 12, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Why not begin building devices that use the European standard for Digital Video Broadcasting–coded orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (COFDM or OFDM) modulation, within a few years it would become the de facto standard for the US, allowing much greater efficiency. All broadcasters need is the ability to utilize spectrum in a flexible system.
Christina Perez says:
November 12, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Who can tell me the real reason this wasn’t done from Jump Street? It had to be a conscious business decision by the poohbahs…
Christina Perez says:
November 12, 2010 at 7:46 pm
Wait… DVB does not accommodate HD in its present config, so it could not be the defacto standard in the U.S. unless you deprive OTA viewers of HD. That will never happen in this country, for the same reason that free OTA TV will never die. It’s not politically or socially viable.
Mel Frerking says:
November 13, 2010 at 4:40 am
KAIL TV, Fresno CA is broadcasting in MPH 2 of its channels. One-to-many is the most efficient. I hope this works out for them.
Randall Jones says:
November 15, 2010 at 11:15 am
Harry…You have hit a home run on this topic.
Those of us who have been developing mobile DTV have been preaching the advantages of mobile broadcast over wireless telecom for the past four years. Broadcasaters now just need to increase the momentum and beat the Telcom guys to the punch.
All we need now is an FCC that is willing to place value on something other than spectrum and we will have won the battle.