Wi-Fi threatens airwaves of low-power TV stations
In the invisible spaces between the broadcast channels on your TV dial, a battle is brewing.
As part of an effort to expand access to broadband Internet, Google and Microsoft are butting heads with the nation’s thousands of lowpower television broadcasters, all jockeying for the same slivers of wireless spectrum.
Caught in the middle are people like Keith Leitch, a longtime broadcast engineer who runs KKPM-TV, which broadcasts a variety of religious and secular programming from Santa Rosa, and viewers like Denise Mills of Oroville (Butte County), who tunes in regularly to the free, over-the-air programs KKPM broadcasts.
The Internet and television industries are grappling over how portions of unused spectrum, commonly dubbed “white space,” should be put to use in the wake of a seismic upheaval of the TV spectrum landscape.
At stake, broadcasters and their advocates say, is the future of low-
power television, a class of TV operators who beam a wide variety of religious, ethnically diverse and hyper-local programming over the air. But setting themselves against the prospect of faster, more reliable Wi-Fi service, experts say, will be a steep uphill fight.
“The balance here is trying to maintain some sort of local broadcasting versus what’s coming next, and what’s coming next is wireless” Internet, said Jonathan Kramer a telecommunications attorney. “The value of having highspeed Internet at home is likely far more valuable than simply access to a local station.”
The Federal Communications Commission is currently running a huge auction of TV airwaves. To sate the country’s appetite for mobile bandwidth, the commission is giving TV broadcasters incentives to sell their broadcasting rights to spectrum-hungry companies like Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.
Once broadcasters hand over their airwaves, they’ll have to squeeze their transmissions into new frequency bands to prevent interference. By law, fullpower television stations get priority in this process, which is called repacking. Low-power stations will have to nestle into whatever spectrum is still available. In some markets, they will have to stop broadcasting altogether if they can’t find new homes.
“In the game of spectrum musical chairs, they’re afraid that when the music stops, there might not be a chair left for one or more (lowpower) stations,” said Michael Calabrese, the director of the Wireless Future Project at the Open Technology Institute, a civic enterprise think tank.
That’s where Google and Microsoft enter the picture. Both companies have petitioned the FCC to set aside a dedicated block of spectrum in each broadcast market after the auction ends that won’t be controlled by a single company and can be solely for Wi-Fi and other wireless technologies. Currently, wireless devices have to navigate around dedicated channels to find free spectrum they can use.
Having the same channel blocked out across the country “makes it far more efficient to deploy new technologies,” Kramer said.
Broadcasters, however, are up in arms over the idea of carving out space for Wi-Fi while low-power stations go dark.
The National Association of Broadcasters, a powerful trade and lobbying group, has taken to calling the proposal “Google channels.” In a Jan. 6 blog post, Alison Neplokh, vice president of spectrum policy, wrote that the “Google channel proposal is really about turning away existing (low-power) stations to make room for … Google devices.”
Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the association, said that the organization doesn’t want to stand in the way of improving the nation’s Wi-Fi, “but if it comes at the expense of hundreds of thousands of people not being able to access free, local broadcast channels, that’s where we have an issue.”
Leitch works as the president and engineer of KKPM-TV, a lowpower station that broadcasts in English, Korean and, soon, Punjabi. The station’s signal can be picked up over the air from Redding to San Jose. Leitch has worked in broadcast television and radio since he was 16. (Operating KKPM is not his full-time job; he also works as a customer support engineer at Keysight Technologies.)
Leitch has made some preparations for the coming channel shuffle after the auction that may help keep him on the air. He’s already voluntarily relocated to a less-desirable channel from which the station is less likely to be displaced. But he sees the proposal to emphasize Wi-Fi as deeply unfair.
“There’s always been an expectation that there will be a home for (lowpower) broadcasters,” Leitch said. “To go against what that expectation has been in the past, and to take spectrum, it goes against a long history,” he said.
Viewer Mills tunes in regularly to KKPM’s “God TV” and other ministerial programming. “There’s a variety of different preachers on there that I love,” she said. “They’re excellent. I love it because it’s free, I get excellent reception and it has the channels I like.”
She gets her television reception from antennas on top of her TV set, and doubts she would pay for cable or satellite access. If Leitch has to stop broadcasting, Mills said, “it would be a huge loss in my life.”
Authorized by the government in the early 1980s, low-power stations are intended to serve rural communities and minorities in urban areas. In addition to local news and information, programming can include anything from ethnic cooking shows to religious services.
California has about 445 stations, including some translator stations that boost signals in rural areas. Together they reach more than 23 million viewers, according to FCC data analyzed by the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition. There are 157 stations in Northern California, and 16 in the Bay Area, according to the National Association of Broadcasters.
Ravi Kapur took over operations of KAXT, a low-power station in San Jose, in 2009, with the goal of reaching ethnic populations in the Bay Area. He’s since struck a deal to sell KAXT, but now runs “about 40 channels across the country, largely serving niche populations,” he said.
Kapur is deeply concerned about the prospect of minorities losing access to native-language news and cultural programming.
“If these stations disappear, there’s no place for these diverse communities to have free, over-the-air broadcast television,” Kapur said. “You’re going to have such an adverse effect on the Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese and Hispanic communities.”
To Kapur, the proposal to reserve spectrum for Wi-Fi represents “the latest attempt to usurp the airwaves for private use.” He thinks Google should bid to buy the spectrum rather than lobby to have it given away.
Google didn’t respond to requests for comment. Microsoft declined to comment. The FCC declined to comment on a pending proceeding, but on its website, it says that the spectrum in question “represents a valuable opportunity for our changing wireless mobile landscape,” which may hint at how the agency will rule on the matter.
Calabrese from the Open Technology Institute claims to be among the first to petition the FCC, in 2002, to make spectrum freely available for wireless devices. (Google and Microsoft threw their support behind the proposal in 2008.) The broadcasters’ argument against the proposal, Calabrese said, amounts to “old whine in a new bottle.”
Reserving vacant channels for wireless Internet would help to expand access to rural areas where connections aren’t readily available, Calabrese said. “The spectrum will be very useful to the emerging Internet of Things as well, which is why hightech companies such as Microsoft, Google and others support it,” he said. He likened the free spectrum to a public park, available for anyone to use, “not just Google.”
Until the spectrum auction ends — it is continuing, and the FCC has not provided a clear timeline for when it will end — there is little for either side of the debate to do but wait and see. Michael Gravino, the director of the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition, expects the incoming Republican administration to move to protect the rights of broadcasters.
“The FCC is going to say I have to channel shift so Google doesn’t have to pay anything?” Gravino asked. “This is the era of Trump. That dog don’t bark.”
For Gravino, the issue “comes down to free speech. You’re pitting Internet-age industrial policy against constitutional rights. That’s the game board. This is Supreme Court stuff.”
While that drama — maybe a courtroom procedural — plays out in Washington, viewers like Mills will have to keep their fingers on the dial. Mills, who got to know Leitch when she called to complain about his station’s sound, said she was “hugely impressed” with his vision for what could be broadcast over the air. Ultimately, what regulators decide will dictate whether Leitch, Kapur and other entrepreneurs get to keep low-power television as a canvas — or have to start streaming their programs over the Internet instead.