NAB: T-Mobile Repack Study Is ‘Misleading’

NAB today blasted T-Mobile’s repacking study that concludes that broadcasters will have plenty of time and money to move to new channels following the incentive auction this spring, calling it an “outcome-driven, oversimplified and misleading analysis.”

The comments came in the form of a notice outlining the meeting between NAB and FCC officials today.

Congress and the FCC are currently planning to give the broadcasters just 39 months to move to new channels and will reimburse them up to $1.75 billion in the post-auction repacking of the TV band.

But an NAB-commissioned study by Digital Tech Consulting last year concluded that it could take between eight and 11 years, given the lack of needed hardware, professional services and tower crews. The cost will be closer to $3 billion than $2 billion, it said.

T-Mobile, one of the likely auction bidders, countered last month with its own study that said the NAB study was flawed and that the current timetable and reimbursement fund were sufficient.

In its notice, the NAB challenges the T-Mobile conclusion and picks apart some of the specific findings, namely, the utility of broadband antennas and the availability of qualified and trusted tower crews.

That many stations will not have to buy and install new broadcast antennas between they have broadband ones is wrong, the notice says.

“While broadband antennas are technically capable of working over multiple frequencies, when they are used on a different channel, in most cases the antenna pattern and/or gain will change. Thus, the antenna will not generally be able to replicate the coverage of a station on a different channel.

“Further, retuning the antenna to a different channel, lower in the UHF band, will generally decrease the gain of the antenna.”

NAB said T-Mobile also overestimates the number of qualified tower crews that will be available to mount or move antennas. “One reason for T-Mobile’s inflated number is that it counts a number of crews that do not even currently perform broadcast work,” the notice says.

“Further, many of NAB’s members have never even heard of a number of the tower crews T-Mobile claims are qualified to perform broadcast work.

“These are not experienced, trusted partners, and broadcasters will not put their most valuable asset in the hands of unproven vendors identified by a company that operates in a completely different network environment.

“Moreover, T-Mobile’s report dangerously oversimplifies the repacking challenge by focusing exclusively on tower height. The relevant question is not how many tower crews may be qualified to perform work on tall towers. Rather, the relevant question is, how many tower crews have the experience, training and equipment necessary to perform broadcast work and antenna installations.

“While we have a great deal of respect for the commission staff and the incredible work they do, ‘trust’ is not enough when the result of inadvertent failure is the death penalty for hundreds of broadcast stations.”