126 Mhz?

Isn,t 126 Mhz part of the Aircraft band?  what did I miss?

Mobile telephone use, what a crock of fecal matter.
As a person who does not participate in the whole mobile phone craze i just find it useless to waste more bands on mobile networks. Why not make another broadcast band?

What about the internet infrastructure that is being pushed beyond it's intended capacity? Yet the FCC is wasting more prescious spectrum on mobile networks GRRRRRRR~!!

So sick of this crap... and what about the ailing shortwave band??
None of this makes any sense to me.

More wonderful auctions and mishaps from the feds...

Link to pdf from FCC for 126 Mhz

While the fcc is making bad deciscions how about they make another one?

Why not extend the FM band to 109 Mhz and push some of the aircraft/maritime channes into a small space? As it stands now, most of that is narrow band and spread out across the AM Aircraft band. Smoosh them together and allow more room on the FM broadcast band for more channels to accomodate the ever growing need for more cookie cutter stations!

I see what might happen to the FM bcb in the future, it will become so congested that the fcc will be convinced to force all FM stations to go all digital to make room for more stations per freqeuncy...

Grr just in one of those moods, makes me miss my pirate days in a way.

I think it is a way for the FCC to impose FM and AM Radio to go all Digital just like they did to TV.  This will force people to have to buy all new Radio's.

If this happens does this mean that transmitting analog for part 15 FM would be illegal?  Something people really should think about as I have.

By "126 MHz" the spectrum being auctioned has nothing to do with the frequency of 126 MHz in the aircraft space or wherever that is...

The reference is to a swath, or that is to say, a bandwidth of frequencies totalling up to 126 MHz-wide, and I think that spectrum space is the lower VHF spectrum we all want part of.

Someone else can have the honor of laying out the specifics of what's being done, I've got other work going on but I will say once again that it appears the FCC is selling PUBLIC airspace to PRIVATE COMMERCIAL INTERESTS who will benefit by charging US, the LAWFUL OWNERS of the space, for using it as cellphone or Wi-Fi connections.

The REAL PIRACY taking place seems to be the FCC ITSELF I guess ultimateky money laundering by cashing OUR money at the bank taken by ILLEGALLY selling our airwaves.

If I am wrong I'll admit it and apologize, but no one has so far disagreed with me or had a better way of explaining it.

The 126 MHz is coming from the UHF TV band.  This means that, ultimately, the TV band will be ch. 2 - ch. 29 (there is some question as to whether ch. 29 will serve as a guard band). In many areas, ch. 14-16 are being used for other communications which will cut down the available channels for TV even further.  So there won't be much space for TV broadcasting.  But this will be several years down the road.  The FCC will be holding multiple auctions until it hits its clearing target.  This will take the auction process into 2017 and then it will be 39 months after that that stations will need to be moved and into their new channel assignments.

But ATSC 3.0 is an exciting standard.  Using H.264 and H.265 as the compression standards it will allow a lot more channel streams than is possible now.  Imagine one channel having almost as many audio streams as Sirius/XM and still have room left over for an HD stream.  Using OFDM it will work much better on VHF then the current 8VSB transmission standard does.  And since 3.0 sits well within the stringent mask requirements of DTV, it is possible to co-channel stations in one market without interference.

Of course, all this new capacity will mean that much more content will be needed and this is where Part 15 broadcasters can cash in. If you're serious about broadcasting without owning a licensed station it would be possible to use the extra capacity of 3.0 to broadcast an audio stream.  Imagine if someone bought a LPTV station and using 3.0 opened up the capacity to dozens of radio streams (with one obligatory video stream).  Or lease a stream from a local station (it could even be done on a barter basis).

Even now, I broadcast using a Rangemaster but I've also negotiated with a local LPTV station to put my audio stream on one of their subchannels.  The station blankets half the county. So far, it's a barter arrangement so I will run some of their commercials (audio only).  But with what is happening with broadcast TV it could be an exciting time for all broadcasters--including Part 15.

Carmine5 Said:

But ATSC 3.0 is an exciting standard.  Using H.264 and H.265 as the compression standards it will allow a lot more channel streams than is possible now.

MrBruce Said:

First of all, Carmine5 is correct when he stated that that 126MHz is spectral band-width, not a lone frequency.

What I am concerned with is, how susceptible is ATSC 3.0 to electrical pulses such as lightening, electric motors, fluorescent light fixtures and electric light switchs?

We have another topic here at part15.us that is geared towards 87.9MHz, I mentioned something that fits this topic better so I will copy and paste my comment here as well.

MrBruce Said in another topic, but this one has a correction and a few words added:

Short end of it is this.

By the time the FCC is done, there will no longer be free over the air television reception.

All stations will end up serving their viewership by Internet feed, direct feed to satellite television services/cable companies and viewers will have to pay for that right to watch those stations to the service providers, who'll then pay the stations for your right to watch them.

Over the air televsion is doomed, what will happen in the next 5 years when the population expands and the nation needs more bandwidth for wireless Internet and cell phone frequencies?

America screwed up years ago when cable television took over, how many homes do you have in your local town that still have a television antenna on the roof? I'll bet you'll have to drive some miles before you find one television antenna still in use or still in any useable condition.

I have several television antennas on my roof that I use for local television reception, although I do have cable television, I use them to receive television stations my cable television company has either removed do to restrictions on out of market dupilcate network stations, or have never added them because of the FCC mandated limit on how many out of market over the air televsion stations they can carry on their systems. Some stations carried, your service provider has to block out that channel when it carries duplicate programing your local station carries.

I also use my television antennas in thee event the cable system loses power or the cable lines are down do to storm damage or car accident takes out a telephone pole.

Imagine having all your stations on one transmitter, where the main channel is in HD, the sub-channels are always in Standard Definition. If after they go with the ATSC 3.0 standard and the sub-channels are still in Standard Definition over the air television will be a lost cause.

VHF LOW is susceptible to lightening static, spark plugs, electric motors etc. Imagine how often your channels will freeze frame with all the electromagnetic noise. If you think the AM broadcast is bad, VHF LOW television will be a real mess and not at all watchable!!!!!!

Conclusion:

They should just get it over with and reallocate the whole VHF low band to FM radio broadcasting.

New comment added for this thread:

I can see the markets being pushed into watching local markets only, because the local and distant stations will occupy the same channels.

Right now, where I live, I can get televistion stations from Boston, MA, Providence R.I. Long Island New York as well as some of my local Connecticut stations. Since TV went digital three of my local Connecticut television stations are no longer receivable and they are supposed to serve my market area. I have some pretty high gain television antennas and one UHF based station on channel 33 digital WFSB TV is tough to get at all. New Haven based television stations WTNH and WCTX never come in here at all, but they did in the analog days.

I have two Connecticut stations that transmit on two of the Boston MA based channels, but by are both receivable, depending on which direction my antenna is pointed in, North-East or West.

When they are all packed on the SAME channels, that will no longer be possible, co-channel will mess both stations up.

When tropo is high, this also causes other issues when both stations are competing for my television receivers attention, there are a lot of freeze-frames when my television receiver is trying to lock on to either signal.

Bruce.

Mr. Bruce said:

What I am concerned with is, how susceptible is ATSC 3.0 to electrical pulses such as lightening, electric motors, fluorescent light fixtures and electric light switchs?

It isn't.  That is the beauty of COFDM.  Tests have been done by Sinclair using 3.0 on the VHF band and the signal is rock solid in a noisy, urban environment--even in a moving car.  This could possibly bring VHF back as a desirable band for TV.

The need for massive amounts of spectrum by wireless carriers is a myth.  When the NBP was researched the data used was for the then state-of-the art: 3G. The Obama government pushed the panic button and called for more spectrum.  Since then, 4G has emerged needing less bandwidth and we will soon see 5G which is even more bandwidth effiecient.  As it is, the UHF band is useless for smartphones but may have some uses for WiFi and networking.

Here is a good article to read for a better understand or adding more confusion in some cases...but it's still a good read.

http://www.fybush.com/nerw-20160502/

Bruce.