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General Radio Discussion / Re: F.C.C. Opens Unused TV Airwaves to Broadband
« on: September 24, 2010, 1544 UTC »Quote
The change in available airwaves, which were freed up by the conversion of television signals from analog to digital, constitutes the first significant block of spectrum made available for unlicensed use by the F.C.C. in 20 years.
How do they make this claim with a straight face?
Before the digital-analog switchover, if an area had 23 TV channels, _after_ the switchover those same 'stations' still occupied 23 TV channels, albeit with different RF frequencies (most everybody moved around a little; some re-occuoied their old RF frequency 'channel' as in the case if CH 8 and 11 in our area for instance).
And, just for the record, the old analog TV channels 'slots' were 6 MHz wide and so are the digital TV channel 'slots'.
Really, this is a matter of semantics; there were concurrent analog and digital TV transmissions in most areas and the 'switchover' merely meant the analog TV transmitters were switched off/taken out of service ... so yes, spectrum was 'freed' up *only* because concurrent D and A transmissions on separate frequencies were no longer taking place, but the choice of modulation "mode" had little to do with it, IMO
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