MSTV Makes Point (Again) Against Unlicensed Devices

MSTV: UNLICENSED DEVICES COULD SAP FCC POWER
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The head of broadcasters' spectrum watchdog group, the Association for Maximum Service Television, Wednesday made the industry's case against allowing unlicensed wireless devices to share the digital broadcast spectrum. It is an argument David Donovan has made many times before as the FCC ponders how to use the spectrum more efficiently and promote advanced communications services at the same time. But Donovan capped the arguments with a warning,just in case those arguments don't win the day. "The underlying factual predicate of an unlicensed regime," he told a Media Institute audience in Washington Thursday, "is that there is no spectrum scarcity...no need for licensing. There are no limits on spectrum access. Spectrum is a function of improvements in the technology of interference avoidance." But, he said, that approach "challenges the factual predicate that underpins most of the content regulation for television broadcasting." In fact, he turned the interference issue into a First Amendment issue, saying that interference goes "right to the heart of a broadcaster's ability to exercise [that] right.... Co-opting the rhetoric of some of the unlicensed device backers. The public's interest in hearing diverse sources of information and viewpoints cannot be achieved if the signals providing those diverse viewpoints cannot be received. The marketplace of ideas is premised on the principle that those who speak will be heard. The First Amendment cannot function in a cacophony of digital voices where speech becomes nothing more than 'white noise.'"
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