Why is February 19th, 2009 important?
Unlike prior February 19ths... the one that is less than one year away will be a very important one in the United States. In case you don't know, on 2/19/2009... we'll be losing analog television and only digital television will be allowed to be broadcast in the United States. This should increase the quality of most television signals. That is not why its important though.
Because of the switch to digital, a significant chunk of the wireless spectrum will be made available to the winner of a currently operating auction (the highest bidder wins). The expected use for the spectrum will be high-speed Internet access. That is why this day will be an important one. Not because you can download pornography faster... or because you can get iTunes clips faster. Instead, it will be because the sheer universality of access will accelerate the drops in prices of technology and facilitate even more of an open world. Everyone will be able to be a publisher, not just the owners of the newspapers, not just the licensees of the radio waves, not just the licensees of the television waves. Instead, we will all be able to use the Internet to express ourselves and communicate events as never before.
How it Works
If you have a hard time grasping this, think similarly to the way that you choose a station on your radio dial. You pick the frequency (for example, FM 93.9) on which you want to "listen." The radio then tunes to that frequency and "reads" the radio waves and turns it into the content produced by the radio station. Now, imagine if instead of tuning to 93.9 and getting one station... you could instead tune to 93.9 and be given the option of choosing from 1,000 stations. That is what has been done by switching from analog to digital in the frequency range that television used to use. But the FCC did not change it so we could have more television stations. Instead, all the old television stations will be squished together on one end of the spectrum (like taking all of the radio stations and putting them on 88.1, 88.3 and 88.5). The left over spectrum will be used (returning to our analogy... 88.7-107.9) for... high-speed Internet access.
The FreePress network has a good blog post about this in the posting entitled Will You Be Ready on February 19, 2009? | Free Press Action Network. Give it a good read and think about what you will be doing to help push the media revolution in 2009.
Because of the switch to digital, a significant chunk of the wireless spectrum will be made available to the winner of a currently operating auction (the highest bidder wins). The expected use for the spectrum will be high-speed Internet access. That is why this day will be an important one. Not because you can download pornography faster... or because you can get iTunes clips faster. Instead, it will be because the sheer universality of access will accelerate the drops in prices of technology and facilitate even more of an open world. Everyone will be able to be a publisher, not just the owners of the newspapers, not just the licensees of the radio waves, not just the licensees of the television waves. Instead, we will all be able to use the Internet to express ourselves and communicate events as never before.
How it Works
If you have a hard time grasping this, think similarly to the way that you choose a station on your radio dial. You pick the frequency (for example, FM 93.9) on which you want to "listen." The radio then tunes to that frequency and "reads" the radio waves and turns it into the content produced by the radio station. Now, imagine if instead of tuning to 93.9 and getting one station... you could instead tune to 93.9 and be given the option of choosing from 1,000 stations. That is what has been done by switching from analog to digital in the frequency range that television used to use. But the FCC did not change it so we could have more television stations. Instead, all the old television stations will be squished together on one end of the spectrum (like taking all of the radio stations and putting them on 88.1, 88.3 and 88.5). The left over spectrum will be used (returning to our analogy... 88.7-107.9) for... high-speed Internet access.
The FreePress network has a good blog post about this in the posting entitled Will You Be Ready on February 19, 2009? | Free Press Action Network. Give it a good read and think about what you will be doing to help push the media revolution in 2009.
posted by Andrew 'Mickey Knox' Gearhart @ 11:41
0 comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home