TWiRT 818 - What's Next After C-Band Satellite?

Well, gentlemen, the title of our show, at least the working title, is What's Next After C-band Satellite? And you got a what? What do you mean, what's next? Don't we have C-band? Well, Mark Johnson, if you don't mind, take a moment and tell us about what we're going to find out about in the coming 50, 55 minutes or so.

Well, what has recently happened at the FCC, going back to July 26th, there was a... an R&O from the FCC laying out a plan to move forward with the taking of 160 megahertz more of the upper C-band.

As you may remember, and most engineers will remember, in 2017, we lost the lower portion of C-band, which was the 3.7 to 4 So we lost 300 megahertz then.

That left us with 200 megahertz.

Well, they're going to take at least 160.

As we get closer to the auction, which will be sometime next year, then...

We'll know for sure whether they're going to take 160 or if they're going to take more.

But the plan is to take at least 160 meg and convert it to cellular mobile devices.

And as you'll see, these different mobile companies uh offering home internet then you you know what is going on um they're using more and more space for mobile devices in your home so streaming and things like that instead of just you know, telephones and hand devices.

So they're requiring more and more bandwidth and they're getting it from us.

Gotcha.

Well, that's what we're going to talk about.

We're going to talk about the timeline for even more changes coming up.

What's going to be left for, uh, broadcasters to use in the C-band for distribution and what some of the alternatives are going to be.

And there's more alternatives than I had thought about.

So Mark and Marcos are going to talk to us about what comes next.

And it appears that LinkUp has been planning for this, so they have some good ideas, and we're going to find out about those.

It's This Week in Radio Tech.

That's the beginning of our show.