Broadcast Overlay Report – November 15, 2011- The Economic Value of Broadcast Innovation Broadcast Overlay Report News Release
Talking Points From News Conference October 20, 2011-
Coalition and Broadcast Overlay Slides
October 20, 2011 10 am National Press Club Murrow Room in Washington DC.
For More Information, contact Lee Miller AT 877-537-8780 EXT 21
Coalition for Free TV and Broadband Unveils Alternative to Incentive Auctions
Washington DC - October 20, 2011 – The Coalition for Free TV and Broadband today unveiled an alternative to the auction of broadcast spectrum at a news event at the National Press Club.
If embraced by Congress and the FCC, the Coalition Plan would:
- Avert a spectrum shortage by providing a vastly more efficient way to deliver the bandwidth-intensive broadband traffic
- Lead to lower prices for mobile broadband data while improving service quality
- Eliminate the need for incentive auctions, protecting Americans who rely on full power and low power broadcast television from loss of service.
- Provide more than $60 billion in new revenue to the U.S. Treasury in the first fifteen years, far more than the projected net proceeds from incentive auctions.
- Provide a perpetual revenue stream that could be worth as much as $216 billion to the U.S. Treasury.
“Americans expect and deserve the most advanced mobile services in the world. But they should not be expected to give up free, over the air television provided by hundreds of full power broadcast stations and thousands of community low-power broadcast stations that would be needlessly sacrificed for the sake of incentive auctions,” states Irwin Podhaiser, Chairman of The Coalition, said. “Our plan eliminates the need to make that choice. By eliminating artificial barriers to innovation in the television broadcast band, Congress can collect far greater revenues than incentive auctions would ever yield.”
Mark Aitken, Vice President of Advanced Technology of Sinclair Broadcast Group spoke to the fact that broadcast delivery of mobile content is a superior technology that makes economic sense. “The economic analysis confirms what we have always believed: the efficiency of broadcast distribution for bandwidth-intensive data, especially high quality video, cannot be matched. And most of the growth in mobile data demand is driven by mobile video use. Eliminating destructive regulations and giving broadcasters the flexibility to innovate and compete will yield huge service improvements for Americans and enormous gains for the Treasury.”
Rajiv Hazaray, Managing Principal of Business Analytix, Inc. put forward his projections and commented “Broadcasters have long maintained that a robust mobile broadcast architecture is essential to meet the ravenous appetite for higher quality mobile services. We now have a rigorous analysis that quantifies the efficiency gains from optimal technology choices, and the results are unequivocal: the approach that is best results for consumers also delivers the most revenue to the US Treasury.”
The techno-economic analysis was prepared for the Coalition by Business Analytix, Inc.
Handouts and news conference video will be made available as soon as possible on the web at www.FreeTVandBroadband.org.
News Conference Participants in order of appearance:
Lee Miller, Communications Director, Coalition For Free TV & Broadband 936-674-5912, lee@freetvandbroadband.org
Irwin Podhajser, Chairman, Coalition For Free TV & Broadband 786-423-7884, irwin@freetvandbroadband.org
Randy Weiss, LPTV Broadcaster and member of NRB Television Committee 2140770-7770 randy@crosstalk.org
Mark A. Aitken, Sinclair Broadcast Group 443-677-4425, maitken@sbgnet.com
Rajiv Hazaray, Business Analytix, Inc. 609-291-7160, rajiv.h@business-analytix.com
Coalition and Broadcast Overlay r7 Slides
