4G war, conflicts of interest loom behind possible DTV delay

Arstechnica ^ | By Julian Sanchez | Published: January 14, 2009 - 05:45AM CT

[Perdogg]

Last week, President-elect Barack Obama's call for a delay in the Digital TV transition, long scheduled for February, sent tech and telecom firms into a tizzy. Both Verizon and the Consumer Electronics Association have been pushing back hard against any postponement of the move from analog to digital broadcasting, while AT&T has joined the Consumers Union and several prominent Democratic legislators in supporting the call to give the troubled transition more time. Among those with a vested interest in the debate over a DTV delay is Clearwire, which has been racing to deploy its 4G WiMAX networks ahead of competitors wedded to the LTE standard. And Ars has learned that Clearwire Executive Vice President R. Gerard Salemme has quietly joined the Obama transition team as a key advisor on DTV issues.

[Perdogg]

ping

[Myrddin]

I have a friend in the cellular industry who says LTE is the next generation that will be adopted by all the cellular carriers. The TDMA, GSM and CDMA world will be shut down in favor of a single standard for towers and handsets. It appears the political strings are being pulled to accelerate this change.

[SunkenCiv]

AT&T has joined the Consumers Union and several prominent Democratic legislators in supporting the call to give the troubled transition more time.

In that case, I give my wholehearted support to the original deadline.

[Myrddin]

I'm running WiMax in the Pocatello area. It's faster than my old DSL, but not much faster. Slightly less expensive too. Another subscriber took his WiMax modem to the Idaho Falls area. The modem turned in blazing 7 Mbps rates compared to under 3 Mbps in Pocatello. The infrastructure and backhaul behind the WiMax towers is critical to getting good performance. The ISP may promise you big throughput numbers, but may not be able to deliver with satisfactory bandwidth to higher tier carriers.

[BobS]

"Such a delay might also avoid a spate of homeowners sliding off icy rooftops as they struggle to install new antennas."

HAH! Built-in Darwin Awards!

[steve86]

I’m gonna guess your WiMax ISP is Digital Bridge. I have a friend in Boise who is very happy with Clearwire.

[Myrddin]

BridgeMaxx is the "brand" they use here. It is Alvarion BreezeMax equipment at 2.3/2.5 GHz.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Give government power to regulate an industry, and the industry will spend time, money, effort, and put their expertise NOT into making a better product, but rather to control the government entities that have power over them.

So it’s not who makes the best product, but who can get their top people closest to the corrupt president.

[OldTCS]

No need to change antennas, just add a D/A converter so the analog TV’s tuner will still work.

[ShadowAce]

[antiRepublicrat]

This guy advises Obama on DTV issues and has tight connections with an obvious DTV stakeholder? So much for Obama’s vetting process that was supposedly designed to catch conflicts of interest.

[JoJo Gunn]

No need to change antennas, just add a D/A converter so the analog TV’s tuner will still work.

It's not that cut and dried. Stations are changing transmitter power, sometimes moving their broadcast antennas, and most VHF'ers are moving to UHF, etc. 

[lormand]

I would think that these broadcasters have been making plans for this switch for a long time, even ending lease agreements for legacy technology, etc. Delaying this would be bad for the broadcasters budgets.