National Association of Broadcasters

Paul Karpowicz has nothing against broadband. But he has no plans to take part in a government effort to bring it to more homes.

Karpowicz is president of Meredith Broadcasting, which owns 12 local TV stations from Portland, Ore., to New Haven, Conn. Meredith also holds unused TV airwaves covering some of those markets and Karpowicz intends to use them to stream programming to handheld devices.

The Federal Communications Commission revealed broad outlines Wednesday for the national broadband plan it is scheduled to submit to Congress early next year. One of the major challenges is to more effectively use the nation's existing telecommunication assets -- including the available wireless spectrum, which is facing impending shortages -- according to a report from the FCC's broadband task force.

On Friday, the United States brought a formal end to more than 60 years of analog broadcast of television signals, when television stations across the nation complied with a Federal Communications Commission order to switch to digital transmission.

Despite the campaign by the National Association of Broadcasters to prepare television viewers for the Feb. 17 switch from analog to digital broadcasting, the U.S. Senate Monday unanimously voted to approve delaying the DTV switch until June -- an effort that President Obama and his administration have been pushing since before Obama took office.

Now that the measure has been approved by the Senate, it needs to be approved by the House of Representatives. The House is expected to vote next week in favor of the switch moving to June 12.

The decision by the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday to open up white space -- the unused frequencies between television channels -- to unlicensed Wi-Fi devices is being hailed by technology companies as the dawning of a new era in broadband Internet access.

But the ruling is also being harshly criticized by various trade groups, including the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), which argues that both the FCC's procedure and the concept are flawed.

Besides the Presidential election, there's another big political battle brewing in Washington on Nov. 4. This one is over the airwaves that are used to deliver communications signals to consumers across the country, and like the race for the White House, this contest has created a big divide.

The debate about using white spaces in the television spectrum white space is getting red-hot as a Nov. 4 vote by the Federal Communications Commission grows closer. As further proof that telecommunications policy makes strange bedfellows, Microsoft has joined Google in urging the FCC to allow white space to be used for a national wireless broadband.

Eight members of Congress are calling on the Federal Communications Commission to delay a planned Nov. 4 vote on a proposal to open up unused portions of the television airwaves known as "white spaces" in order to deliver wireless broadband services.

The proposal by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is a high priority for public interest groups and many of the nation's biggest technology companies, including Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., which hope it will bring universal, affordable broadband service to rural America and other underserved parts of the country.

The National Association of Broadcasters is raising objections to a Federal Communications Commission report suggesting that unlicensed wireless devices could operate in vacant slices of the white-space spectrum without causing interference to adjacent TV channels.

The NAB said the executive summary released by the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology is actually contradicted by the report's key findings.

Hoping to continue building momentum for its Silverlight technology, Microsoft announced Monday that major content providers are coming aboard and it unveiled a new digital-rights management (DRM) system.

The announcement, at the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas, said Silverlight technology will be used by Madison Square Garden Interactive, Tencent, Abertis Telecom, Terra Networks Operations, SCSi, MNet, and Yahoo Japan.

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