>I guess the FCC (and millions of other folks) are very upset about February
>17th :-)
>
> <URL:
> http://www.betanews.com/article/The_DTV_launch_is_a_shambles_say_FCC_commissioners/1231621388
> >
>
> The call earlier this week by President-Elect Obama's transition team to
> perhaps delay next month's DTV switch didn't just "come up" at Saturday's
> "2009 Regulatory Outlook" panel at CES. It electrified it.
>
> Jonathan Adelstein and Robert McDowell, both commissioners at the Federal
> Communications Commission, have seen trouble coming for a very long time.
> Adelstein has served at the FCC since 2002, and McDowell began his first
> term in 2006.
>
> Remember the coordinated governmental effort to fix and work around
> potential Y2K problems? That tech initiative, like the DTV transition,
> involved multiple agencies. And that's where the coordination comparison
> ends. Where the Y2K effort had top-down supervision from the White House,
> various guidelines to action, and synchronized effort, this has...well, at
> least it's only television, not a hurricane aimed at a major US city.
>
> Nobody will actually drown thanks to a botched DTV rollout, but Adelstein
> and McDowell's description gave listeners the sense that the program has
> been in rough water since well before the transition team's remarks on
> Thursday. No one -- at the FCC or any other agency -- is tasked
> specifically with the changeover; there's no White House staffer cracking
> the whip. No one was charged with developing guidelines or information for
> the nation's 1,600-odd broadcasters, or for equipment manufacturers, or
> support teams. And, says McDowell, without coordination "we haven't
> maximized even the limited resources we had."
>
> The results have been disturbing. A plan to reach the nation's 210
> television market areas (TMAs) by working with mayors fizzled out,
> Adelstein remarked, when "somebody moved." State and local
> consumer-edition efforts suffered because the feds haven't been able to
> communicate what's happening and what to expect; in fact, both men said,
> feds, broadcasters and contractors often didn't know about important
> developments unless and until they were reported in the trade press. And
> the performance of the two toll-free consumer hotlines (888-CALL-FCC and
> 888-DTV-2009) would make the worst tech-support line operators blush.
>
> With no coordination and no guidance, FCC field reps and the local TMAs
> have reached out to anyone who can maybe help, "reinventing the wheel" in
> each market as Adelstein put it. In some locales, someone thought to speak
> to ham radio operators about assisting in wiring up citizens who needed
> help; in other places, the Salvation Army was contacted. McDowell said
> that focused efforts were made to tap groups serving those who might not
> understand the situation -- AARP and other senior groups to work with the
> elderly, for instance, and PBS call centers in locales where public TV is
> well-established.
>
> But delaying the launch will make some problems worse, especially for
> companies that have invested in digital with the promise of this final
> firm 2009 date. And some problems will exist whatever the roll date might
> be, notes McDowell: "There's always a certain percentage of
> procrastinators as well as those who through no fault of their own aren't
> ready. We don't know where we are necessarily, and unfortunately the only
> way to know [where these people are] is to have their screens go dark."
> There'll be a thirty-day period after the rollout for reaching out to
> those citizens, he says, but they'll be there regardless, and "for those
> who act at the last minute you need to have a last minute."
>
> There are an amazing number of local issues turning up, too. For instance,
> says McDowell, they've just realized that many houses in Las Vegas are
> built mainly of stucco and chicken wire --
> accidental Faraday cages. Those houses will need a rooftop booster, and
> there's no "coupon plan" for that. (The coupon plan has been in trouble
> for awhile; at this point, the commissioners estimated that there could be
> as many as 5 million applications by next month.)
>
> To coin a phrase, what the heck happened? One audience member pointedly
> said that she'd attended hearings at which the NTIA and FCC had pledged to
> work together on the transition -- "What happened?" The panel members
> laughed, a little, and one noted that "[FCC Chairman Kevin Martin] speaks
> at 1:30 -- that'd be a good question to ask him."
> ---------------------------------------------------------
>
> kch
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