You are a Latino immigrant living in the United States.
Would you give up Spanish-language television programs to gain high-speed wireless Internet access in your home?
Regardless of your answer, the broadcast and telecommunications industries have made up your mind for you.
The broadcast industry, which currently controls the airwaves that accommodate local programming such as foreign language shows, says no. You don't want your favorite telenovelas to go away at any cost.
The telecommunications industry, eying those airwaves for use with future wireless services, says it also doesn't want to take away your favorite shows. But broadcasters, the telecommunications industry says, could easily provide your favorite programming by way of cable or digital signals, leaving room for you to get cell-phone service, too.
"Six years ago, the broadcasters were notified by the FCC that they would have to move," said Kimberly Kuo, spokeswoman for the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association. "This didn't come up last week."
She added: "It's a very small percentage of the local television audience who wouldn't have other options to get those channels."
Both industries resumed finger-pointing last week when the Federal Communications Commission, acting on a congressional mandate, indefinitely postponed an auction of airwaves in the 700 MHz spectrum band.
The spectrum, currently occupied by broadcasters that operate UHF TV channels 52 through 69, will be sold to wireless service providers. But under federal regulations, the broadcasters, who are required to convert from analog to digital signals, don't have to surrender their spectrum licenses until 2007.
The uncertainty surrounding the availability of the licenses forced Congress to pass legislation last Tuesday night that postponed the auction slated to take place the next day. The FCC is currently revising its rules to ensure a smoother hand-off of the spectrum.
But as the FCC scrambles to get its act together, many consumers face the possibility of losing local programming like foreign language and religious shows and/or never seeing cell-phone coverage in their area.
There are a couple hundred stations, mainly independent broadcasters, still operating on UHF channels 52 through 69, said Dennis Wharton, spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters. While he did not have specific numbers of people who tune into the stations, he estimated there were "millions" of viewers.
"Particularly, immigrant communities rely on those foreign-language stations as a source for news and information and weather alerts when there's an emergency," Wharton said. "It can often be lifesaving."
The costs of switching from analog to digital signals have prohibited many small, independent broadcasters from moving off the 700 MHz band, he said. Other broadcasters are hesitant to air digital content when TV manufacturers are still producing analog TV sets, he added.
Either way, once the 2007 deadline arrives, if these broadcasters haven't moved off the spectrum band, their viewers will be cut off, Wharton said.
While the telecom industry doesn't want people to wake up to a black television screen, it says the broadcast industry is bluffing. Broadcasters have been given free spectrum and plenty of time to move, telecom experts say.
"It's not like the broadcasters are getting totally screwed," said Carri Bennet, an attorney representing the Rural Telecommunications Group, a lobbyist for wireless carriers in rural areas.
CTIA's Kuo said financial interests -- not hardships -- kept broadcasters from moving off the band. If the 700 MHz auction were held today, wireless companies desperate to put the airwaves to use would "buy out" the broadcasters, she said.
"It's like buying a house in an auction," Kuo said. The auctioneer "is asking for you to bid on a building that is full of squatters but you aren't getting any help to remove the squatters."
Wharton denied Kuo's assertion that broadcasters didn't want the auction to take place as planned. He said that even some members of CTIA favored holding the auction last week.
Bennet's group, the Rural Telecommunications Group, is one of those groups.
Thanks to the Rural Telecommunications Group's lobbying efforts, Congress stipulated that the FCC had to sell a sliver of the 700 MHz airwaves to rural carriers by this September. The Rural Telecommunications Group feared that many households in rural America would be left out of the wireless future of cell phones and mobile Internet services because they wouldn't be able to bid against the industry behemoths like AT&T Wireless.
"The Telecommunications Act requires that all Americans get (telephone) service, not just those who live in urban areas," Bennet said.
Kuo said the spectrum from the 700 MHz band would allow mobile phone carriers to provide some areas with cell-phone service, improve cell-phone coverage and sell new services such as streaming video and audio over mobile phones.
But Wharton is weary of the rosy picture CTIA is painting for its potential customers.
"I think there's a way to accommodate both," he said. "But I think it's important we not forget or leave behind all those viewers that rely on free local television service in the process."
