The FCC’s predictive model doesn’t account for buildings, trees a...
The FCC’s predictive model doesn’t account for buildings, trees and other “clutter,” EchoStar said Mon. in oral argument at the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C. Consumer ability to get over-the-air signals matters to DBS providers, since customers seen as “unserved”…
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are eligible to get certain network TV stations over satellite. EchoStar called the FCC’s use of a revised version of the Individual Location Longley-Rice (ILLR) model (CD Dec 12 p9) “mystifying.” A user may live near a broadcast tower, but the Empire State Building may be in the way, said EchoStar attorney Pantelis Michalopoulos. Michalopoulos said the FCC’s revised version of the ILLR is blind to buildings and other “land use” variables Congress requires the FCC to weigh in predicting TV signal coverage. But FCC attorney Joel Marcus said today’s ILLR takes land use into account, albeit generally. Changing the model only would make it less accurate, he argued. In tell the FCC to consider “clutter loss” when predicting TV signal coverage, “Congress wasn’t saying ‘This is an interesting engineering exercise for the FCC to do.’ Congress was saying it wants a reliable model,” Marcus said. The FCC’s ultimate decision to zero out clutter loss in the ILLR equation for VHF channels made for the most accurate model, he said. Said Judge Ginsberg: “So it’s as if Congress says, ‘Do the best you can, taking into account X.’ And you came back and said, ‘It looks like we already did'?” Marcus agreed, saying: “For better or for worse, that’s why we are the experts at this stuff.” Judges Williams and Sentelle asked questions that revolved around a now-contested NAB data set the FCC used in its paradigm, the statistical distribution of the model’s output and the FCC’s ex parte rules. Mon.’s arguments came just after the appearance of a related FCC report to Congress on gauging DTV signal strength. Released Fri., that report’s findings were consistent with Marcus’s arguments. Lawmakers had asked the FCC to conduct an inquiry and recommend what changes, if any, the agency should make to its digital signal strength testing standards, which determine if a household is “unserved” and thus eligible for distant digital signals. The FCC recommended no standards changes, and said an overhaul of the ILLR model isn’t needed. But the FCC did say it will study whether ILLR needs some modifications to address differences between analog and digital TV signals.