[jeffdubin]

The failure was letting encryption into the standard in the first place. This will be a never ending game, with big broadcasters continuously lobbying the FCC and congress for the ability to monetize the broadcast bands. If we allow broadcast television to become a subscription service, then just kill TV broadcasting and repurpose this spectrum for mobile (cellular) use. I'm not endorsing this idea, I'm only saying that by going down the path of encrypted transmissions, broadcasters are no different than any other ISP - except they'll own the pipe AND control the content.

You want to stop this in its tracks? Convince Amazon to start buying some TV stations. Congress would be livid.

[LocalH]

It's not about turning OTA into a subscription service. It's about taking control of which devices are allowed to view OTA channels. It's about taking control away from the end-user in terms of what they can do with the signal that they record with their equipment. Privately sending that video to wherever I am physically located? Not if they don't say you can.

It's disgusting, and the FCC should be ashamed for not flatly rejecting encryption on OTA channels in all its forms.

[mcny]

> then just kill TV broadcasting and repurpose this spectrum for mobile (cellular) use

I would much rather prefer it become an unlicensed spectrum. I absolutely abhor the idea that spectrum goes to the highest bidder in our current regulatory environment that greatly favors incumbents.

[coding123]

That's not feasible unless there's some regulatory body requiring spectrum sharing (CDMA or GSM or something else?)

[russellbeattie]

> Convince Amazon to start buying some TV stations.

Heh. Along those lines... When I was an Amazon Product Manager back in 2020, I was tasked to work on a plan for ATSC 3.0 support in Fire TV. I actually suggested that one of the opportunities was to buy/invest in digital broadcast towers as a way of multicasting large amounts of data wirelessly. Some people in AWS were interested in the idea as well. Note - I'm talking about using the towers for one-way digital data transfer, not owning stations.

Everything about my proposal - even the basic support stuff for Fire TV - was rejected wholesale and I left soon after. (In case you're wondering why Sony, Samsung, HiSense, LG and other TVs you can buy today have ATSC 3.0 support and Fire TVs don't.) The lack of forward thinking at Amazon has become endemic.

BTW, it's surreal to spend nearly 6 months deep diving into a technology from hardware to software, tower to TV, then hearing absolutely nothing about it for 3 years, then suddenly seeing two front page links about it in a span of days. Truly surreal.

[bee_rider]

> If we allow broadcast television to become a subscription service, then just kill TV broadcasting and repurpose this spectrum for mobile (cellular) use.

We should definitely do this, at least. Maybe keep educational stuff like PBS going, but no need to waste bandwidth on soap operas or sports.

[toast0]

In the US, this has happened three times already: in the 80s, channels 70-83 were reallocated to cell phones; in 2008, channels 52-69 were reallocated to cell phones; in 2016, channels 38-51 were reallocated to cell phones. So cell phones have already taken half the spectrum originally allocated to OTA tv.

[MAGZine]

yes, instead we can waste the bandwidth on reddit, twitter, instagram, and netflix.

[clhodapp]

How about re-purposing some of it for unlicensed short-range consumer devices (a la WiFi, Bluetooth). We desperately need more spectrum for that.

[lxgr]

For short-range communications such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, the existing higher frequencies will do just fine.

But getting more low-frequency spectrum would be great for longer-range mesh based use cases. For example, I find it quite absurd that I can't message friends a few hundred meters away (e.g. on an airplane sitting in a different row, a few aisles over in a supermarket in a basement etc.) without the both of us having an internet connection via Wi-Fi or cell signal.

[Meph504]

I hope you submitted that as a comment, as I think it is well said, and should be heard.