[00:00.000 --> 00:01.780]  ...housing project in Springfield, Illinois.
[00:02.800 --> 00:21.860]  He was blinded by an incident of police violence when he was in his early 20s, I think, and he was going to start a newspaper for the housing project that he lived in, but he said, you know, first of all, you know, I can't see, you know, and I can't, like,
[00:22.100 --> 00:23.820]  do this whole printing press sort of thing.
[00:24.060 --> 00:25.660]  Why don't we start a radio station?
[00:26.380 --> 00:29.360]  And people were like, start a radio station?
[00:29.480 --> 00:30.380]  You need a license for that.
[00:30.480 --> 00:31.100]  That's impossible.
[00:31.400 --> 00:33.800]  And he's like, well, let's see what happens.
[00:33.960 --> 00:36.080]  Let's see what happens if they just come and get me.
[00:36.980 --> 00:43.860]  And so somewhere he got this one-watt transmitter and started this little pirate station in his housing project.
[00:44.180 --> 00:47.260]  He ran for about three years without incident.
[00:47.440 --> 00:52.380]  You know, just people, like, around the block, they would hear and, you know, know what was going on with it.
[00:52.380 --> 01:02.960]  But then, about three years into it, one of his friends got beaten up by the police, and Vaughn actually went to the hospital and did an interview with him.
[01:03.300 --> 01:10.820]  And then within, like, a day or two, like, everyone had heard these interviews and had checked it out, and there were protests on the street.
[01:11.700 --> 01:18.500]  And within, like, four or five days, the FCC came knocking on the door and said, you don't have a license for that radio station.
[01:18.500 --> 01:20.140]  You're interfering with airplanes.
[01:20.880 --> 01:27.840]  And what Cantaco did, very, very shrewd move, he went down to the federal building.
[01:28.160 --> 01:32.540]  He said, here I am, he called the press, he said, here I am, put the handcuffs on me.
[01:32.740 --> 01:38.140]  I would love to see the proof of all this interference my one-watt radio station is causing.
[01:39.120 --> 01:45.040]  And the FCC never dared to touch him for many, many years after that.
[01:45.040 --> 01:51.100]  And so people were, wait a second, this guy is operating a pirate radio station, and the FCC is not shutting him down.
[01:51.400 --> 01:55.880]  And so the next, you know, people around the country started to take notice.
[01:56.340 --> 02:01.500]  There was a peace activist in Berkeley, Stephen Dunifer, who started broadcasting with even more power.
[02:01.760 --> 02:09.840]  The FCC tried to shut him down, and a judge actually refused to grant the FCC an injunction against this pirate radio operation.
[02:10.380 --> 02:18.560]  And so after that, the floodgates kind of opened, and everyone was like, well, wait a second, the FCC, you know, there's rules against this, but they're not enforcing them.
[02:18.720 --> 02:21.040]  Like, even a judge said that they can't enforce these rules.
[02:21.040 --> 02:28.280]  And so my group, it was a group called Radio Mutiny, we started in 1996.
[02:28.900 --> 02:33.340]  None of us had ever been on the radio, none of us knew anything about radio.
[02:33.460 --> 02:41.960]  We were, like, teaching ourselves to, like, solder and stuff, and we kept on, like, buying these little kits, and they would go, you know, blow up in our faces, and, like, you know, totally not work.
[02:41.960 --> 02:52.800]  But finally, we got the station on the air, and within a few months, we had, like, 80 DJs on seven nights a week, and we were a community radio station.
[02:53.020 --> 03:06.740]  And it was a great intersection of all the social movements that we supported that had so much trouble getting their messages out through the media, But, like, every time we would, like, go with our signs to the corner that said, don't do that, stop that now,
[03:07.240 --> 03:17.900]  you know, we would get ignored, and we started to figure out, oh, well, it's because the same corporations that are these giant military contractors that we're protesting are the ones that own the media, too.
[03:18.480 --> 03:30.500]  And so the pirate station was, like, like, this kind of awesome project that brought together all of the strands of, you know, the progressive movements that we supported, also lots of artists and local musicians.
[03:31.600 --> 03:34.680]  You know, and so there was all kinds of music on there that you just wouldn't hear.
[03:34.860 --> 03:44.100]  There was, like, the klezmer, surf music, you know, show, and the Native American hip-hop show, and so it was just this really awesome, awesome, fun project.
[03:44.720 --> 03:53.060]  Finally, the judge gave permission to bust Stephen Dunifer in Berkeley, and there was this giant wave of shutdowns in 1998.
[03:53.820 --> 04:08.340]  But what was weird, and what we were not expecting at all, was that the new chairman of the FCC, he was the first African-American chairman of the FCC, and he had these big dreams, like, I'm going to become the chairman of the FCC, and I'm going to straighten out this terrible situation with minority ownership,
[04:08.580 --> 04:15.860]  where, like, like, you know, minorities are, like, 33% of the population of the United States, and they own, like, 6% of the broadcast licenses.
[04:16.120 --> 04:29.640]  And instead, he saw it go down during his term, because he was ordered by Congress to allow this massive consolidation that allowed hundreds and hundreds of stations, like, small-town stations and city stations, to get bought up.
[04:30.100 --> 04:34.620]  And, you know, he actually looked at us, and he was like, these are some really weird people.
[04:35.420 --> 04:38.840]  But they kind of have a point about who owns the airwaves.
[04:38.960 --> 04:47.080]  And so he opened up this rulemaking, and he started the process of legalizing pirate radio stations.
[04:47.840 --> 04:57.920]  And he said, I'm not going to legalize all of them, you know, but if someone wants to apply and get a license, you know, we're going to make a way, before I leave office, that they can do that.
[04:58.560 --> 05:06.700]  And so it was around that time that they did kick down the door of radio mutiny and come and confiscate it all, and I kind of didn't have anything else to do.
[05:06.820 --> 05:16.160]  So I started the Prometheus Radio Project, which was a group that was designed to hold the FCC accountable to their promises about opening up the airwaves to the people.
[05:16.160 --> 05:23.380]  And so we, like, I don't know, we, like, raised money for engineering studies and did all this sort of thing.
[05:23.480 --> 05:30.960]  And it culminated in 2000 with, actually, the FCC did open up a new round of radio licenses.
[05:31.220 --> 05:32.400]  They're 100 watts.
[05:33.280 --> 05:36.440]  They are available to non-commercial organizations.
[05:36.580 --> 05:38.960]  And so it was super exciting.
[05:39.580 --> 05:52.420]  It was kind of sucky because, I mean, my life went from, like, eye patches and parrots and swords and all that to, like, okay, this is how you fill out the Form 318 and what you put under the parties to the application.
[05:52.680 --> 05:54.260]  So it became a lot more paperwork.
[05:54.480 --> 06:02.280]  But it was also really exciting because, you know, when we were all pirates, it was, like, one subset of people that would do it.
[06:02.400 --> 06:03.760]  And they were great people.
[06:03.860 --> 06:04.600]  They were really fun.
[06:04.820 --> 06:07.400]  Like, they were all, like, really reckless and fun.
[06:07.400 --> 06:14.560]  But on the other hand, like, it was just not, you know, once we started having licenses that people could apply for, all of a sudden we could...
[06:14.560 --> 06:20.600]  We were working with farm workers unions and environmental groups and, like, just, like, a way wider cross-section of people.
[06:20.720 --> 06:28.320]  And I kind of realized that community radio should not just be for the reckless, although reckless people are a lot of fun.
[06:29.200 --> 06:30.300]  It should be for everybody.
[06:30.620 --> 06:32.100]  I mean, the airwaves belong to all of us.
[06:32.180 --> 06:38.600]  And we should be, like, it should just be an expectation in a democracy that, like, all kinds of people will have voices over the airwaves.
[06:38.940 --> 06:42.660]  So, yeah, you know, we started filling out these applications.
[06:42.660 --> 06:46.800]  And then Maggie gets to tell the rotten part.
[06:47.200 --> 06:47.440]  Okay.
[06:48.180 --> 06:50.620]  So that brings us to 2000 or so.
[06:50.860 --> 06:53.960]  And Pete mentioned having a round of applications.
[06:53.960 --> 07:04.680]  So if you want to get a license, like, to drive a car, you can generally go in whenever you want and you say, I'm ready to get my driver's license, and you take a test and you get your license.
[07:05.260 --> 07:10.600]  The FCC doesn't want to do that because it would be a lot of overhead for them to process rolling applications.
[07:10.700 --> 07:16.340]  So what they do instead is they say, we're going to have windows when you can apply for licenses.
[07:16.340 --> 07:19.760]  And the windows are pretty short, like, as short as five days long.
[07:21.700 --> 07:26.460]  So for this first round of low-power FM, they said, we're going to have five windows.
[07:26.700 --> 07:30.600]  And depending on where in the country you live, you get a particular window to apply.
[07:30.980 --> 07:32.780]  And you send in your application then.
[07:32.780 --> 07:35.840]  And if you miss the window, then you miss your opportunity.
[07:36.840 --> 07:38.300]  So the first window happened.
[07:38.460 --> 07:39.600]  Lots of great people applied.
[07:39.860 --> 07:40.480]  Window closed.
[07:40.720 --> 07:41.860]  Second window happened.
[07:42.240 --> 07:42.660]  Same deal.
[07:42.780 --> 07:43.460]  Lots of applicants.
[07:43.460 --> 07:44.140]  It closed.
[07:44.580 --> 07:49.200]  And then around that time, a lot of the big broadcasters started talking to Congress.
[07:49.200 --> 07:57.040]  So the bigger broadcasters were talking about how they were worried about interference from the low-power stations.
[07:57.840 --> 08:01.360]  This is kind of funny because the low-power stations were 100 watts.
[08:02.120 --> 08:04.880]  So 100 watts is like the headlights on your car.
[08:05.140 --> 08:10.000]  The big stations were up to 100 kilowatts, which is about, like, the engine on your car.
[08:10.920 --> 08:17.140]  So if you think of it in terms of worrying that your headlights are going to interfere with your engine, it doesn't actually make a lot of sense.
[08:17.960 --> 08:21.160]  So we all know that that's probably not actually a problem.
[08:21.680 --> 08:25.080]  The FCC knew it wasn't a problem, or they wouldn't have done this in the first place.
[08:25.600 --> 08:28.240]  The big broadcasters knew it, too, because they were smart.
[08:29.840 --> 08:37.300]  But for some reason, they didn't want the low-power stations, possibly because they were worried that if someone played good content, people would stop listening to them.
[08:37.300 --> 08:42.620]  So they said, well, who can we convince that this is a problem?
[08:42.740 --> 08:45.260]  Well, we could probably convince Congress, because they're really gullible.
[08:45.580 --> 08:48.620]  And Congress can tell the FCC what to do, so this is perfect.
[08:50.120 --> 08:59.260]  So the way that they went about it was to make up this CD with samples of what their radio stations would sound like with a lot of interference.
[09:00.080 --> 09:05.000]  And since there wasn't actual interference to document, they just made something up.
[09:05.060 --> 09:09.960]  So they took a couple of radio programs and mixed them together on a mixer and said, this is what it's going to sound like.
[09:10.080 --> 09:11.040]  Doesn't this sound terrible?
[09:11.220 --> 09:11.840]  Shouldn't we stop it?
[09:12.920 --> 09:15.200]  And the FCC caught on to that.
[09:15.700 --> 09:20.920]  And they said, quote, this CD demonstration is misleading and is simply wrong.
[09:21.840 --> 09:23.500]  But Congress fell for it.
[09:24.040 --> 09:27.780]  So Congress went ahead and did a couple of things.
[09:28.020 --> 09:35.780]  One thing was to change the way that low power stations are allocated, which I'll get back to in a second.
[09:36.040 --> 09:42.900]  And the other was to tell the FCC that they needed to do a study to investigate this more before they could make further rules.
[09:48.000 --> 09:53.440]  So for the first part, this is a little diagram of a section of the FM band.
[09:53.660 --> 09:58.260]  So imagine that you want to put a radio station at 91.3.
[09:59.140 --> 10:02.660]  If someone else is at 91.3, there's a lot of potential to interfere.
[10:02.660 --> 10:07.180]  So you can't do that if there's anyone else within like 100 kilometers or so on your station.
[10:07.940 --> 10:10.580]  But you can also interfere with people who are close to you.
[10:10.580 --> 10:19.680]  So if there's someone close to you on either of the first adjacent channels, so 91.1 or 91.5, then you also can't put a station there.
[10:19.960 --> 10:21.660]  Same with the second adjacent channels.
[10:22.360 --> 10:25.120]  So Congress said, why don't you throw in third adjacent channels too?
[10:25.440 --> 10:33.540]  Which is kind of funny because the big stations don't have to worry about third adjacent channels, even though they're the ones who can make more interference, but the little stations do.
[10:34.920 --> 10:45.560]  So that meant that lots of the people who had already applied for licenses couldn't get their licenses anymore because they had applied somewhere where there was someone else on the third adjacent channel.
[10:46.420 --> 10:51.580]  It also meant that there were a bunch of people who wanted to apply in the next window and couldn't do it.
[10:52.120 --> 11:02.080]  So it took out hundreds of people, mostly the people in more urban areas, which is sad because if you're low power, you don't go that far, so the best place to be is an urban area.
[11:03.140 --> 11:18.220]  So the FCC went ahead and they commissioned the MITRE Corporation, this private contractor, to do a multi-million dollar study, and the corporation did the study and they said, looks great, no problems with interference, you don't have to worry about it.
[11:18.580 --> 11:24.280]  So the FCC said, okay, great, and then kind of waited for Congress to change laws back.
[11:24.600 --> 11:25.760]  Congress didn't do anything.
[11:26.240 --> 11:31.260]  So Prometheus and some other people started pushing Congress pretty hard to change these rules.
[11:33.960 --> 11:36.920]  And we've been doing that for about six years now.
[11:37.080 --> 11:39.000]  So a congressional cycle takes two years.
[11:39.200 --> 11:41.180]  This is the third cycle of it.
[11:41.640 --> 11:46.060]  So the exciting thing is that we've gotten a lot further this cycle than we ever have before.
[11:46.540 --> 11:48.780]  The bill has actually passed out of the House.
[11:49.980 --> 11:54.840]  And pretty much all it has to do is pass out of the Senate, and we have to get the president to sign it.
[11:55.820 --> 12:05.220]  There's a little bit of a hang-up, which is that there's a senator from Oklahoma, named Tom Coburn, who has put a hold on the bill.
[12:05.620 --> 12:07.320]  I hear a couple of people laughing.
[12:07.620 --> 12:08.260]  So the...
[12:09.600 --> 12:16.440]  Yeah, the thing about Coburn, he's the very first hit, if you Google Senate hotline, because he has such a reputation for doing this.
[12:16.520 --> 12:22.000]  His reputation is that he puts hold on bills and then never takes them off.
[12:22.240 --> 12:26.580]  So we're starting to look into how to deal with that.
[12:26.580 --> 12:29.560]  So I'm going to pass around the sign-up sheet in a minute.
[12:29.740 --> 12:32.420]  If you happen to be from Oklahoma, you should definitely sign up.
[12:32.520 --> 12:36.820]  And we'll probably call you at some point, and we might ask you to put some pressure on your senator.
[12:40.880 --> 12:41.600]  Well, so...
[12:42.920 --> 12:43.280]  But...
[12:43.280 --> 12:44.560]  So, okay, so that's our background.
[12:44.760 --> 12:45.520]  That's Low Power FM.
[12:45.800 --> 12:50.060]  We wanted to talk a little bit more broadly about the airwaves in general.
[12:52.580 --> 13:05.980]  And because, you know, FM is a 65, 70-year-old technology, and, you know, and we're going to get a little bit into why we continue to love FM so much.
[13:07.060 --> 13:16.440]  You know, everyone's, like, really interested in studying the adoption of new technologies, but I'm kind of fascinated by why some technologies just seem to keep on sticking around.
[13:16.440 --> 13:25.460]  And there's some really interesting reasons that 93% of Americans still listen to FM radio every week, even though there's, like, all these new, advanced things coming out.
[13:25.960 --> 13:26.440]  But...
[13:26.440 --> 13:27.320]  So we'll get into that.
[13:27.440 --> 13:31.960]  But I do want to talk about, like, what's going to happen with the future of the airwaves.
[13:33.180 --> 13:36.060]  Because there's a lot that's come out since FM.
[13:37.480 --> 13:47.540]  When radio was first invented, you know, it was mostly just people kind of screwing around with, like, giant sparks and arc gaps and things.
[13:47.840 --> 13:55.940]  And so the very first radio, the miracle was that it was action at a distance without wires.
[13:56.320 --> 14:00.940]  And you could, like, push the button here, and this giant spark would flash.
[14:01.080 --> 14:08.580]  And then, like, over there, like, 500 feet away, like, you would get this little click, you know?
[14:08.580 --> 14:12.600]  And so that was the amazing wonder of radio in 1892.
[14:13.060 --> 14:14.820]  Like, it was super spooky at that time.
[14:15.500 --> 14:22.100]  But then they realized, like, as they were trying to make it practical, they were like, there can only be one of these in the world.
[14:23.520 --> 14:29.220]  You know, because there's, you know, like, you have the giant arc flash, and then, you know, the thing goes click.
[14:29.760 --> 14:37.560]  So they started coming up, playing with different things, and they came up with the idea of using frequency to create channels.
[14:38.360 --> 14:44.360]  And so, I don't know, it's really complicated, and it's going way before, like, what I really understand everything about.
[14:44.440 --> 14:54.200]  But they had these giant machines with giant armatures and spinning disks and arcs that would, like, spark, you know, like, 100,000 cycles per second.
[14:54.340 --> 14:56.100]  And there were, like, certain, like, things.
[14:56.100 --> 15:09.060]  And what they would do is, like, you would have some frequencies that, you know, one frequency would be one channel, and, you know, another, you know, the guy that's going 50,000 times a round per second, they have their own channel, and the guy that's,
[15:09.080 --> 15:13.020]  like, at 40,000 per second, they get their own channel, too.
[15:13.900 --> 15:22.120]  And eventually they came up with cleverer ways that weren't limited by the speed at which they could make motors rotate and, you know, all kinds of things along those lines.
[15:22.780 --> 15:32.800]  And then they started realizing that they had to regulate it in such a way to create a system where everyone would have their own channels.
[15:33.080 --> 15:48.720]  And so if you can imagine the legal framework behind early radio was, if you think of a highway, and you have one lane where all the baby monitors work, and you have another lane where all the CB operators are like, break a break, good buddy.
[15:49.160 --> 15:55.160]  And then you have another lane where all the AM radio stations are working.
[15:55.480 --> 15:57.040]  So everyone gets their own lane.
[15:57.260 --> 16:01.300]  No one can go in each other's lane because that would be terrible.
[16:02.660 --> 16:06.040]  So that was the basis of early radio regulation.
[16:08.620 --> 16:13.180]  But what happened was that... and that worked for a long time.
[16:13.180 --> 16:17.660]  More and more frequencies became usable and more and more, you know, technology came along.
[16:18.280 --> 16:24.340]  But one problem with it was, most of the time, people weren't really using those frequencies.
[16:24.780 --> 16:29.180]  I mean, your baby monitor is on all the time, but usually the baby is not crying.
[16:29.460 --> 16:32.300]  And so no real information is going over it.
[16:32.480 --> 16:37.380]  Your garage door opener, there's a special frequency for it, but usually you're not opening and closing your garage.
[16:37.380 --> 16:43.400]  So there's an incredible inefficiency to that system where there are all these different lanes.
[16:43.860 --> 16:55.980]  Now, over time, some advances happened, like the digitization of audio, which made it so that you could be a little bit more tolerant of delays and buffering and all that sort of thing.
[16:58.200 --> 17:13.180]  And then there was a next step where people started to experiment with unlicensed bands, where there would be this portion of the band at 2.4 gigahertz where anyone could do anything as long as they followed a few simple rules, which was, you know, there are 10 or 20 channels there.
[17:13.420 --> 17:14.860]  No one can go over a certain power.
[17:15.460 --> 17:17.260]  The experts predicted chaos.
[17:17.460 --> 17:18.840]  They were like, this is going to be junk.
[17:19.100 --> 17:20.720]  You know, this is like just a mess.
[17:20.940 --> 17:22.080]  Like, anyone can do anything.
[17:22.080 --> 17:25.980]  It's like a frat party, like, you know, just like a big mess.
[17:26.920 --> 17:38.280]  But actually what happened was because of the power level limit and because the devices followed the rules, it became one of the most intensively used bands that there were.
[17:38.520 --> 17:40.260]  And that's where we get Wi-Fi now.
[17:40.600 --> 17:45.400]  That's where all kinds of devices run that were much more complicated to license before.
[17:45.720 --> 17:49.020]  And so it was an enormous success, the unlicensed bands.
[17:49.020 --> 17:58.400]  And then some people started even thinking about the next step, which is, you know, in the 60s and 70s, the Internet was being developed for the military.
[17:59.120 --> 18:13.260]  And their big concern was, you know, okay, we have the hotline from the president to the missile silo or whatever, but what if the Russians hit that phone line and we can't fire off our missiles back or whatever?
[18:13.260 --> 18:14.840]  So they were all worried about all this stuff.
[18:14.980 --> 18:22.460]  And so they created, you know, the interweb, you know, like with all, you know, these different routes that you could get there.
[18:23.920 --> 18:40.260]  Well, so at this point, some of the people that were thinking, that were like thinking about how the Internet should work, have turned their attention to the radio airwaves and thinking about that stupid problem of like all those lanes on the highway that,
[18:40.280 --> 18:42.640]  you know, are unused most of the time.
[18:42.640 --> 19:01.380]  And wouldn't it be better, you know, since we're kind of running out of spectrum to do it the way we have done it, if you could have things like opportunistic sharing, or in other words, white spaces devices, which are devices that allow you to... it's like it's a transmitter,
[19:01.600 --> 19:02.940]  but it's got a little receiver in it.
[19:03.060 --> 19:06.040]  And the receiver is like, hmm, is the baby crying?
[19:06.960 --> 19:07.380]  No.
[19:07.720 --> 19:08.120]  Okay.
[19:08.320 --> 19:11.100]  I think I'll use the baby frequency right now.
[19:11.100 --> 19:13.300]  And then, oh, whoop, baby started crying.
[19:13.480 --> 19:13.640]  Okay.
[19:13.740 --> 19:16.200]  I'm going to switch over, you know, and check out another band.
[19:16.600 --> 19:17.600]  Oh, oh yeah.
[19:17.820 --> 19:17.920]  Okay.
[19:18.060 --> 19:20.300]  The, the CB radio band sounds pretty good right now.
[19:20.440 --> 19:23.100]  I think I'll send my little blip of digital data through that.
[19:23.560 --> 19:27.840]  And so that's, that's what the technology can do.
[19:28.180 --> 19:38.580]  I mean, these devices are already being, you know, put together, and the FCC has even like tentatively approved some experimentation with them, but they haven't really quite completed the process.
[19:38.580 --> 20:01.900]  And so we could be looking at a future where there is ubiquitous free communication, and where it's not really as much about like getting to the Internet as like getting a contract with Comcast, but like my cell phone talks with the water cooler, the water cooler talks to your like little implant things that people are playing around with here.
[20:01.900 --> 20:15.920]  There are the implant things talk to the cameras and like just the, it's a web of devices that play by a certain set of rules, as opposed to connecting to the interweb out there.
[20:16.220 --> 20:22.280]  So it's kind of exciting, except it's kind of not what's really happening.
[20:23.800 --> 20:26.300]  This is where I get to talk about the depressing part again.
[20:28.240 --> 20:36.800]  So I want to talk a little bit about the reality of what's happening to the spectrum, and a couple things that you may have heard about that are kind of in the news these days.
[20:37.720 --> 20:44.760]  So for background, there are two rules I recommend keeping in mind if you're trying to figure out how spectrum changes will happen.
[20:44.760 --> 20:54.460]  The first is that unless everyday people are really, really loud, the FCC basically does what incumbent broadcasters or incumbents on the spectrum want.
[20:54.900 --> 20:58.540]  Because those are the people they talk to, they think of them as the experts.
[20:59.080 --> 21:00.860]  Sometimes they ask for a public comment.
[21:01.500 --> 21:05.420]  But if too many people from the public comment, they say, wait, wait, that's not what we meant.
[21:05.500 --> 21:07.120]  We just wanted the experts to comment.
[21:08.000 --> 21:16.120]  The second thing is that incumbents tend to claim that they own the spectrum or that it's theirs, and they have some, like, sacred right to the spectrum.
[21:16.960 --> 21:18.460]  So that's not really how it works.
[21:18.620 --> 21:28.000]  The public owns the spectrum and the FCC can license, give someone a license to use a certain part of the spectrum for a certain thing for a finite period of time.
[21:29.100 --> 21:35.680]  But there's this precedent now of compensating people when you take spectrum away from them, so people tend to think of it as owning it.
[21:36.700 --> 21:47.000]  So with those things in mind, one thing you may have heard about lately is this national broadband plan that the FCC is coming up with, and there seems to be a lot of press around it.
[21:47.180 --> 21:55.860]  So the idea of the national broadband plan is the FCC said, seems like the Internet is more than just entertainment these days.
[21:55.860 --> 21:58.280]  It seems to be really critical infrastructure.
[21:58.520 --> 21:59.660]  So everyone in the U.S.
[21:59.780 --> 22:00.200]  should have it.
[22:00.380 --> 22:08.620]  So we're going to make sure that by 2020, everyone has access to four megabits per second download rate and one megabit per second upload rate.
[22:09.600 --> 22:10.480]  So that's cool.
[22:10.660 --> 22:11.840]  I don't think it's that mind-blowing.
[22:12.480 --> 22:17.060]  When I was in high school, one megabit per second sounded like a lot.
[22:18.500 --> 22:21.160]  It doesn't sound like that much anymore.
[22:21.160 --> 22:26.380]  It turns out a lot of the countries that are leading the world in this already have that.
[22:27.100 --> 22:29.100]  And our plan is to have that by 2020.
[22:29.980 --> 22:43.440]  But regardless of that, it seems like if you're reforming broadband, maybe that's a good place to make some space for opportunistic sharing and unlicensed stuff on the Internet because the Internet is one place where that has already worked pretty well.
[22:44.100 --> 22:52.640]  So the FCC says they're going to make 500 megahertz of spectrum available for mobile broadband.
[22:53.080 --> 22:58.280]  And most of that is going to be between 225 megahertz and 3.7 gigahertz.
[22:58.280 --> 23:02.980]  So the first thing to note about that is that 500 megahertz is a lot of spectrum.
[23:03.540 --> 23:06.900]  The whole FM band for radio is 20 megahertz.
[23:07.100 --> 23:12.180]  So think of 25 times that all new stuff getting allocated for broadband.
[23:12.780 --> 23:19.640]  The second thing is that they gave that range from 225 megahertz to 3.7 gigahertz.
[23:19.900 --> 23:21.860]  That's actually a really nice place to be.
[23:21.860 --> 23:30.520]  So 225 megahertz is about where you hit the range where you can use small enough antennas to be good in mobile devices.
[23:31.340 --> 23:34.360]  And the upper edge of that is 3.7 gigahertz.
[23:34.560 --> 23:38.660]  That's about where your waves stop being good at penetrating things like walls.
[23:38.880 --> 23:45.940]  So you're in this range that's really good for anything that's mobile because you can make it small and you can at least get through a couple walls.
[23:49.020 --> 23:53.480]  So they've talked a little bit about unlicensed devices on here.
[23:53.860 --> 23:58.040]  It seems like there's still the potential to use some of that space for unlicensed stuff.
[23:58.220 --> 24:01.300]  But they've also been talking a lot about auctions.
[24:01.660 --> 24:09.640]  So auctioning spectrum means that you're getting money for it and one particular company gets exclusive rights to that part of the spectrum.
[24:09.640 --> 24:12.080]  So that's the everyone gets one lane on the highway thing.
[24:14.020 --> 24:20.160]  And to make that even worse, some of that spectrum is used by TV right now.
[24:20.280 --> 24:22.900]  And the TV broadcasters don't want to give up their spectrum.
[24:23.040 --> 24:29.420]  So the FCC is talking about letting them have some of the money that comes in from the auctions as compensation.
[24:29.760 --> 24:36.060]  So in the big picture, you have spectrum that's getting used the same old way that's not that efficient.
[24:37.740 --> 24:42.020]  The same corporations that have been using it in the past are probably going to be buying more of it.
[24:42.380 --> 24:48.660]  Some of the money, instead of just going to close the budget gap, is actually going to go back to other big broadcasters.
[24:49.780 --> 24:51.780]  And they're going to charge you to use the spectrum.
[24:52.120 --> 24:54.060]  So it's not a great deal.
[24:54.180 --> 24:55.660]  That stuff's not all written in stone.
[24:55.960 --> 24:57.900]  They haven't actually made the rules about it.
[24:57.960 --> 24:59.060]  They've just put out this plan.
[24:59.240 --> 25:05.780]  So there's still a little bit of an opportunity to push for rules that maybe make a little more sense than that.
[25:07.700 --> 25:16.260]  A second thing that's happening is there's this process of trying to get people to start using digital radio.
[25:17.580 --> 25:19.140]  Also seems like a great idea.
[25:19.280 --> 25:20.680]  So digital radio is more efficient.
[25:20.700 --> 25:23.600]  So it means you can send more stuff in the same amount of spectrum.
[25:24.600 --> 25:30.640]  The current implementation is something I should probably show you in visual form.
[25:30.640 --> 25:34.380]  It's hybrid digital radio is what it's usually called.
[25:35.760 --> 25:37.320]  Forget about those plots.
[25:39.840 --> 25:41.600]  And look at that one for now.
[25:42.180 --> 25:51.400]  So in hybrid digital radio, the only people who can use digital radio are the people who already have analog radio stations.
[25:52.880 --> 26:01.820]  Because instead of taking a new section of spectrum and making it the digital part, they just say, well, you can use a little bit of spectrum right next to the part you already have.
[26:02.060 --> 26:05.860]  So in the picture there, there's an analog station in the middle.
[26:06.140 --> 26:09.000]  There's a green line at 107.3.
[26:09.580 --> 26:11.240]  This is from a spectrum analyzer.
[26:11.240 --> 26:13.860]  So all the little white lines are where your signal is.
[26:14.560 --> 26:18.400]  And then off to either side of that is where the digital signal goes.
[26:18.600 --> 26:24.600]  So you send out your analog signal and then you encode some stuff digitally and send that out on the sides.
[26:25.940 --> 26:29.700]  There are three pretty big problems with this, in my opinion.
[26:29.880 --> 26:32.820]  So one is that nobody new gets to use the spectrum this way.
[26:32.900 --> 26:35.640]  You already have to have a radio station to do this digital thing.
[26:37.180 --> 26:40.280]  Second problem is a problem with interference.
[26:40.280 --> 26:45.300]  And I feel kind of funny talking about this now because we just talked about bullshit interference problems.
[26:46.240 --> 26:52.700]  But if you look at that picture there, you'll see there are also these orange and blue lines on the side.
[26:52.840 --> 26:54.600]  So those are the first adjacent stations.
[26:55.320 --> 27:01.720]  And those white lines from the digital stuff on the side are practically on top of the first adjacent stations.
[27:02.220 --> 27:06.600]  And those are generally a lot more powerful than, say, the low power FM's.
[27:07.940 --> 27:17.340]  So there's been some research showing that there are problems with digital stations interfering with the stations next to them and also interfering with their own analog signal.
[27:17.560 --> 27:23.180]  So if a radio station you really like goes digital and you don't have a digital radio, it might be hard to hear them in analog.
[27:24.540 --> 27:31.580]  So the third problem, you may have heard hybrid radio referred to as HD radio.
[27:32.600 --> 27:36.800]  A lot of people for obvious reasons think that the HD stands for high definition.
[27:37.160 --> 27:38.400]  It actually doesn't.
[27:38.600 --> 27:44.780]  So it supposedly at one point stood for hybrid digital, but now it's just one of those weird trademark names.
[27:44.780 --> 27:48.720]  So this company called Ibiquity has trademarked the name HD radio.
[27:49.020 --> 27:54.500]  So why does a company get to pick the name that we all use when we talk about digital radio?
[27:55.640 --> 28:07.120]  Well, in a lot of countries that are doing the hybrid digital thing, they're using an open encoding scheme for when they turn everything into digital and turn it back into analog.
[28:07.380 --> 28:09.040]  It seems to be working pretty well.
[28:09.040 --> 28:10.820]  The way that it's going in the U.S.
[28:10.940 --> 28:20.260]  is that the FCC says there's only one way you can do it and you have to use this one proprietary scheme that was made by the company Ibiquity that trademarked the name HD radio.
[28:21.780 --> 28:38.700]  So that means, for one thing, if you want to be a broadcaster doing a digital signal, you have to pay something on the order of $100,000 just to get set up with everything and about $5,000 a year in royalties to Ibiquity for using their scheme.
[28:39.280 --> 28:44.340]  And then if you want to listen to HD radio, you have to buy an HD receiver.
[28:44.520 --> 28:49.040]  And some of the money that you spend on that is also going towards paying royalties to Ibiquity.
[28:49.440 --> 29:00.360]  So this is a little different from the broadband model because instead of getting charged directly for the spectrum use, you're getting charged by a company that's implementing the technology.
[29:01.340 --> 29:04.240]  But it still means nobody new is getting on the air.
[29:06.140 --> 29:10.400]  And you're getting charged to put something out and you're getting charged to receive something.
[29:10.680 --> 29:12.640]  So you're kind of getting screwed at either end of it.
[29:13.860 --> 29:23.760]  So the main lesson that I think should come out of this is that we need to be louder because if we're not, the FCC is going to do what all the big broadcasters want.
[29:24.140 --> 29:31.260]  And we're doing a little bit of this spectrum reform stuff at Prometheus, but there are other people who are devoting all of their resources to it.
[29:31.400 --> 29:39.420]  So if you want to learn more about the big picture spectrum stuff, I'd actually recommend looking at someone like New America Foundation.
[29:39.480 --> 29:41.620]  They do a lot of similar stuff.
[29:41.740 --> 29:46.520]  They have a lot of good resources on the Internet and they're doing good work.
[29:46.520 --> 29:55.180]  And a big shout out to Ben Cobb in the audience today who like anything that we know about it, we learned a lot of it from him.
[29:56.100 --> 29:58.380]  Parts of it that we made up are not his fault.
[30:01.020 --> 30:11.480]  So one last thing is another question we get asked a lot is like he was saying, why do you still do this analog radio thing when there's all this new technology?
[30:12.180 --> 30:17.640]  There are some obvious reasons I think that I just outlined for why some of the newer technology isn't working very well.
[30:18.960 --> 30:24.380]  But just to kind of recap, FM radio is really cheap to produce.
[30:24.620 --> 30:31.500]  So low power FM stations can get started for somewhere on the order of $10,000 if you're really cheap about stuff.
[30:31.900 --> 30:36.660]  And you're only using 100 watts so you don't have really big ongoing power that you have to pay for.
[30:36.660 --> 30:38.740]  And it's basically free to consume.
[30:39.040 --> 30:41.460]  Like radios cost, you know, 10 bucks.
[30:41.820 --> 30:45.040]  And you don't have to pay to use them except for a tiny bit of power.
[30:45.240 --> 30:46.620]  And it scales really well.
[30:46.840 --> 30:52.860]  So Internet radio, if I'm an Internet broadcaster, I have to pay more money for every new listener I get.
[30:53.360 --> 30:57.800]  FM radio, you can have as many listeners as you want and you don't have to pay anything extra for it.
[30:58.720 --> 31:02.440]  And then above all that, people still listen to FM radio a lot.
[31:02.440 --> 31:10.940]  The statistic I heard pretty recently was that 93% of people in the U.S. listen to FM radio once a week.
[31:11.520 --> 31:15.020]  13% listen to Internet radio about once a week.
[31:15.480 --> 31:18.520]  Only 7% of the country has even heard of HD radio.
[31:18.700 --> 31:21.920]  And that's exactly the same percent that it was in 2006.
[31:22.200 --> 31:23.740]  So it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
[31:24.780 --> 31:27.200]  So we still think that FM radio is pretty cool.
[31:27.420 --> 31:28.640]  We still do a lot of it.
[31:28.640 --> 31:36.600]  And going back to the uplifting stuff, Pete's going to talk a little bit about the radio station barn raisings that we do with FM stations.
[31:37.520 --> 31:38.320]  Yeah, sure.
[31:38.480 --> 31:42.640]  Well, I mean, and we do these events that we call radio barn raisings.
[31:44.120 --> 31:54.840]  For one reason, as a political tactic in order to build public consciousness about the issues of who owns the spectrum and how it's used.
[31:55.640 --> 32:03.840]  Because, you know, most of the time, most people just really don't even think, you know, they don't know what channel from a frequency from a, you know, from a this or that.
[32:04.760 --> 32:08.300]  So it's an opportunity to, like, to sort of shine a light on these issues.
[32:08.860 --> 32:22.040]  So what we do at the radio barn raisings is we gather about three or four hundred people together at one of the new radio licenses that we get.
[32:22.660 --> 32:26.920]  And usually it's, like, a group that has, like, some, like, really incredible story.
[32:27.100 --> 32:33.680]  Like, they're a farm workers organization that's been fighting the bosses in order to, like, get a raise for the past ten years.
[32:33.680 --> 32:36.080]  And, like, they're totally shut out of the local media.
[32:36.820 --> 32:39.980]  And they really want a radio station to be able to help them organize.
[32:40.320 --> 32:46.720]  Or they're an environmental group that's been fighting a new shopping mall being built on the Chesapeake Bay.
[32:46.720 --> 32:49.960]  And, you know, and they've been blacked out by the local media.
[32:50.580 --> 32:55.540]  And they want a way to reply on, like, all the issues that are brought up.
[32:55.680 --> 33:01.940]  Or a civil rights group that's been working on education reform and, like, farmers cooperatives.
[33:02.060 --> 33:04.680]  And, you know, and they've been, like, left off the dial, too.
[33:05.320 --> 33:12.960]  So we'll work with a group like that that really needs a voice in the media, that really needs a bigger voice in the local democracy.
[33:14.480 --> 33:17.100]  And we'll bring about 300 people.
[33:17.780 --> 33:19.860]  And, plus, there'll be a lot of people locally.
[33:21.980 --> 33:23.760]  And we start on Friday morning.
[33:24.100 --> 33:27.260]  And, like, all the equipment is just, like, sort of sitting around in a pile.
[33:27.760 --> 33:29.780]  And we have 30 or 40 workshops.
[33:29.780 --> 33:40.060]  And over the course of the weekend, like, we, like, have workshops on how to tune antenna and how to wire up a mixing board and how to, you know, do all these things.
[33:40.060 --> 33:41.560]  And then it's not just technical.
[33:41.840 --> 33:58.040]  I mean, we do a lot to demystify the technology, but also the policy process and how to, like, organize yourself, how to, like, deal with conflict in a group, how to raise money, how to, you know, come up with policies about governing yourself.
[33:58.520 --> 34:02.080]  So, over the course of the weekend, like, we try to do everything that you need to know.
[34:02.660 --> 34:03.920]  Not everything you need to know.
[34:04.060 --> 34:07.700]  But a lot of what you will need to get started to run a radio station.
[34:09.720 --> 34:11.940]  And nobody sleeps very much.
[34:13.840 --> 34:18.220]  And, you know, by Saturday at 6 o'clock, we've got to be on the air.
[34:18.220 --> 34:28.040]  So, it's kind of nice because, like, sometimes, like, in a lot of, you know, a lot of things, like, where people are talking about politics, people spend the whole time arguing with each other.
[34:28.360 --> 34:37.400]  But it's very nice to have a goal where, okay, you know, if you guys are going to fight about this stuff, we just won't, you know, finish the radio station before we leave, you know.
[34:37.560 --> 34:38.740]  And that will be really helpful.
[34:40.560 --> 34:45.860]  So, people, like, kind of put that stuff aside, and they focus, and they put the radio station on the air.
[34:46.040 --> 34:53.820]  And then the first broadcast is at 6 o'clock, and we just, like, you know, all the new DJs, like, you know, they'll play a new song or two.
[34:53.980 --> 34:56.460]  They'll talk about, like, what kind of show that they're going to do.
[34:56.700 --> 34:59.360]  They'll have, like, short interviews and, like, all local talent.
[34:59.720 --> 35:02.060]  So, they're super, super exciting.
[35:04.540 --> 35:09.140]  And we're really excited that there's actually going to be one not so far from here.
[35:09.920 --> 35:17.760]  So, our next barn raising is going to be in this fine state of New York, a little bit north of here in the Hudson Valley.
[35:18.840 --> 35:27.320]  And one thing that's really exciting about the barn raising that's coming up is all of the other barn raisings we've done have been for low-power FM stations, which are great.
[35:28.140 --> 35:36.640]  But every once in a while, someone gets a license for a full-power station, which is especially good in rural areas like the Hudson Valley.
[35:36.840 --> 35:40.680]  And full-power radio stations can reach a lot further.
[35:40.940 --> 35:42.940]  So, we have this little map up here.
[35:43.080 --> 35:50.060]  This is the predicted coverage of WGXC, which is the station that we'll be building in Hudson.
[35:50.820 --> 35:56.020]  And the blue contour there is the area where their signal is supposed to be really awesome.
[35:56.860 --> 35:59.980]  The orange line around that is where it should be pretty good.
[36:00.620 --> 36:05.220]  And I know that that's kind of small, and you probably can't see any of what's up there except for the lines.
[36:05.460 --> 36:10.160]  But there's a green line going through the middle, and that's I-87.
[36:11.740 --> 36:17.200]  And the stretch of the green line that goes from the bottom to the top of the blue is about 85 miles.
[36:18.180 --> 36:26.460]  So, that means that there's going to be, I don't know, like over a hundred-mile stretch where you can hear their radio station pretty well if you're driving up the interstate.
[36:26.940 --> 36:29.420]  Even further if you're going west to east.
[36:29.880 --> 36:31.260]  So, this is really big.
[36:33.180 --> 36:33.620]  And...
[36:33.620 --> 36:35.020]  3,300 watts.
[36:35.240 --> 36:38.480]  It's more watts than all the others we've put together, but combined.
[36:39.420 --> 36:43.640]  The other reason this is exciting is because this is a really awesome organization.
[36:45.140 --> 36:48.420]  WGXT came out of a group called Free 103.9.
[36:49.460 --> 36:55.300]  And Free 103.9 has been doing webcasting for a while, so they already kind of have the radio thing down.
[36:55.480 --> 37:01.080]  And they have this place called the Wave Farm where they do all kinds of transmission arts.
[37:01.080 --> 37:05.260]  So, they have, like, transmission sculptures all over the farm.
[37:05.500 --> 37:14.780]  My favorite one is this sculpture that has all of these discs that spin around at speeds that are determined by winds that are measured in five different places around the state.
[37:15.060 --> 37:20.140]  And the discs somehow produce an audio signal, and the audio signal gets sent out over a shortwave.
[37:20.260 --> 37:29.280]  So, you have this really pretty spinning sculpture, but you also can listen on shortwave radio and hear, like, some representation of the winds in five different places around the state.
[37:29.280 --> 37:35.820]  And they're also working on just engaging pretty much everyone else in their community who might be interested in doing radio.
[37:37.120 --> 37:39.420]  So we'll be there in September.
[37:39.680 --> 37:43.340]  The barn raising is the 24th through the 26th.
[37:43.680 --> 37:45.100]  And there's a bunch of information.
[37:45.100 --> 37:49.140]  You can already register for it on our website, prometheusradio.org.
[37:49.200 --> 37:58.080]  So if you think that you might want to help build a radio station and teach a bunch of other people about radio while you're at it, then you should go.
[37:58.080 --> 38:04.180]  And before we take questions, I just want to acknowledge a couple of people.
[38:04.540 --> 38:07.820]  So JJ and Pablo both contributed a bunch of the photos we used.
[38:07.980 --> 38:10.220]  Chris made the awesome logo on the last slide.
[38:11.560 --> 38:23.420]  And if you want to actually, like, get your hands dirty and start building radio stuff instead of just listening to us talk about it, tomorrow at noon we're going to be building little tiny radio transmitters in the Hackerspace Village.
[38:23.600 --> 38:24.540]  So come check it out.
[38:25.820 --> 38:28.260]  Yeah, these transmitters are pretty cool.
[38:29.340 --> 38:32.580]  They were developed by this guy, Tetsuo Kagawa, in Japan.
[38:32.880 --> 38:41.260]  And he noticed, like, a little loophole in the rules there that you could actually have a radio station up to a quarter of a watt.
[38:42.760 --> 38:44.520]  And that's not very much.
[38:44.940 --> 38:51.380]  But in Tokyo, like, that could be, like, 10,000 people, like, just in, like, a quarter-mile radius.
[38:52.620 --> 38:56.740]  So, like, so there was this little mini FM boom in the 80s.
[38:56.840 --> 38:58.720]  And these are actually weaker than that.
[38:58.840 --> 39:01.080]  They're just, like, his very simplest transmitter.
[39:01.220 --> 39:02.280]  It's just 14 parts.
[39:03.280 --> 39:04.980]  And, you know, we make them from scratch.
[39:05.220 --> 39:09.720]  And, you know, you could probably upgrade it to that whole quarter watt if you're really clever.
[39:09.880 --> 39:12.600]  But, you know, tomorrow will just be a really basic version of it.
[39:13.000 --> 39:13.020]  So.
[39:13.440 --> 39:13.840]  All right.
[39:14.020 --> 39:15.160]  So, some questions?
[39:16.720 --> 39:17.120]  Yep.
[39:18.080 --> 39:18.480]  Ben?
[39:20.220 --> 39:20.780]  Oh, no.
[39:20.900 --> 39:24.320]  He's going to correct all the stuff that I got wrong about the open spectrum.
[39:24.700 --> 39:25.320]  Uh-oh.
[39:26.340 --> 39:28.580]  I'm not going to correct anything at all, Pete.
[39:28.780 --> 39:35.340]  I just want to underscore what Maggie talked about with regard to this 500 megahertz of spectrum.
[39:35.560 --> 39:41.760]  This is going to be a battleground, a huge battleground, over who is going to get to control that spectrum.
[39:41.760 --> 39:45.720]  Um, it's worth noting that a lot of this is already allocated.
[39:46.000 --> 39:53.840]  And so this is one of the reasons why it's easy for the White House to say, look, we've got this fantastic huge chunk of spectrum that's on the way.
[39:54.240 --> 40:03.020]  Some of it is allocated to a company that launched a satellite, uh, I guess over 10 years ago, uh, called MSAT, that has not been a very good business.
[40:03.020 --> 40:18.520]  And over time, they have persuaded the FCC to let them forget about the satellite and turn this into a big nationwide competitor to Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile as a, basically a terrestrial cellular network.
[40:18.520 --> 40:21.860]  Another thing is what happens to unlicensed.
[40:23.300 --> 40:33.240]  When the White House representative announced this big piece of spectrum recently, he said, government is not going to make these decisions about who gets the spectrum.
[40:33.500 --> 40:36.720]  But he also said, we want some of it for unlicensed.
[40:36.920 --> 40:40.560]  These two things are completely opposed to each other.
[40:41.220 --> 40:46.420]  There's lots of companies pushing to bid in huge auctions for the spectrum.
[40:47.540 --> 40:50.840]  But if it's unlicensed, there's no licenses to auction.
[40:51.540 --> 40:57.940]  And unlicensed means Wi-Fi and similar on devices that you and I will be using in the future.
[40:58.460 --> 41:09.620]  So, the big question is, how much of it are they going to keep out of the auctions and use for unlicensed, where that spectrum doesn't generate any billions of dollars for the government?
[41:10.860 --> 41:11.980]  Yep, totally.
[41:13.320 --> 41:15.720]  Well, this gentleman is saying that society will be richer.
[41:15.720 --> 41:16.720]  That's absolutely the case.
[41:16.860 --> 41:21.020]  But I'm from Washington, D.C., and nobody pays attention to things that make the society richer.
[41:21.200 --> 41:23.200]  It's all about making private parties richer.
[41:23.380 --> 41:25.820]  So, please watch this closely.
[41:26.020 --> 41:44.520]  And if you get an opportunity to lobby, to make contact with Congress about this, this is going to be the difference between whether all of this spectrum is going to be available to you only at high prices, in cellular phone service or through whatever it's going to be used for,
[41:44.640 --> 41:50.280]  or whether you will have the opportunity to use it without having to pay large corporations to use it.
[41:50.920 --> 41:51.080]  Yeah.
[41:51.780 --> 41:52.480]  Yeah, excellent.
[41:52.600 --> 41:53.520]  Thanks for the comment.
[41:53.860 --> 42:06.800]  I just want to say I have no doubt whatsoever that the more spectrum is unlicensed for any kind of free innovation, the richer that our entire society will become.
[42:07.140 --> 42:17.250]  And that tiny little bit of money that they make in an auction bequeathing all that power to AT&T and Verizon will take away...
[42:17.250 --> 42:22.890]  I mean, we waited 50 years for phones to advance beyond dial phones.
[42:23.250 --> 42:28.550]  They stayed at dial phones from the 30s to the 80s until they split up Bell Telephone.
[42:28.730 --> 42:34.090]  So, if you want that kind of lack of innovation, just let them auction off this spectrum.
[42:34.390 --> 42:35.870]  There is something you can do.
[42:36.010 --> 42:42.490]  You can go to openinternet.gov, openinternet.gov, and let your voice be heard.
[42:42.630 --> 42:44.070]  Very few people speak on there.
[42:44.070 --> 42:51.910]  So, if a couple hundred people from here get on there, I know that the FCC administrators are all reading that.
[42:52.150 --> 42:53.010]  They really do read it.
[42:53.590 --> 43:04.070]  Well, and one thing I'll just point out, they want to, like, auction off this spectrum, but they're not even going to make the people that get the spectrum commit to be net neutral.
[43:04.850 --> 43:05.250]  Right.
[43:05.390 --> 43:07.510]  So, you could end up with, like, a very...
[43:07.510 --> 43:09.730]  It's a very penny-wise, pound-foolish thing to do, to auction off the spectrum.
[43:09.930 --> 43:10.030]  Yeah.
[43:10.030 --> 43:13.090]  Because those companies are just going to turn around and charge us anyway.
[43:13.090 --> 43:14.490]  So, we're going to pay twice.
[43:14.750 --> 43:14.890]  Yeah.
[43:15.330 --> 43:15.530]  Absolutely.
[43:15.530 --> 43:17.230]  So, that's kind of dumb to do.
[43:17.670 --> 43:17.730]  Yeah.
[43:17.790 --> 43:21.750]  That was a good Bush administration idea, but I don't like seeing Obama do that.
[43:23.170 --> 43:23.610]  Thanks.
[43:23.750 --> 43:27.670]  I have a question for you about the windows that you talked about for the applications.
[43:27.970 --> 43:31.390]  Obviously, you guys are still doing barn raisings.
[43:31.390 --> 43:40.750]  So, are there windows that are opening for LPFM, or is this in...
[43:41.390 --> 43:46.010]  I mean, can you explain a little bit about where are these licenses coming from?
[43:46.010 --> 43:52.290]  Because it seemed like there was a huge door that opened and then it slammed shut really fast.
[43:52.290 --> 43:52.710]  Yeah.
[43:52.870 --> 43:53.690]  That's a great question.
[43:53.910 --> 43:55.470]  That's not actually too far off.
[43:55.590 --> 43:57.050]  So, there was a set of five windows.
[43:57.530 --> 44:02.550]  All of the barn raisings we've done so far have been people who got licenses back in those windows.
[44:02.690 --> 44:05.170]  Sometimes it takes a while for everything to actually come through.
[44:06.650 --> 44:08.150]  So, yes.
[44:08.850 --> 44:15.550]  So, the last barn raising we did was in summer of 07, and that was somebody who had applied in the original window.
[44:15.910 --> 44:19.090]  There has been one window for full power licenses.
[44:19.550 --> 44:24.430]  The FCC has actually said that they're holding off on doing another window until...
[44:24.430 --> 44:31.690]  essentially until this bill passes in Congress, because it's not worth it for them to do a window now and do another window after the rules change.
[44:33.690 --> 44:44.150]  So, if the bill passes, you know, in the next couple months, then we're looking at another window or another round of windows in probably the next year or two.
[44:44.390 --> 44:48.290]  With the way the bill is written now, what...
[44:48.290 --> 44:53.810]  how many stations are you talking about that that would open availability for in...
[44:53.810 --> 45:01.050]  or any of them in metropolitan areas or does it remove enough of the problems with the interference?
[45:02.090 --> 45:02.690]  BS?
[45:03.150 --> 45:05.810]  The bill by itself does not do that.
[45:06.590 --> 45:09.910]  The bill basically gives authority back to the FCC.
[45:10.290 --> 45:15.390]  And once the FCC has the authority, then a lot of things can happen.
[45:15.750 --> 45:31.530]  The FCC has already tentatively concluded that they intend to loosen the LPFM rules and make it possible for stations to use more sophisticated analyses and find more channels, particularly in the urban areas.
[45:31.750 --> 45:32.890]  So, we're really excited.
[45:33.130 --> 45:36.230]  The main thing we need, first, Congress gets out of the way.
[45:36.710 --> 45:39.830]  Then, second, you know, we've got to deal with the FCC a little bit more.
[45:39.950 --> 45:45.650]  But once we've got those two steps done, then it seems like there's going to be pretty...
[45:45.650 --> 45:53.950]  I mean, not a million stations, you know, not 10,000 stations, but there's going to be a lot of radio stations that are available as a result of it.
[45:53.950 --> 45:58.950]  And, you know, some of them will be in some of the largest metropolitan areas.
[45:59.190 --> 46:01.450]  Not dozens, but a few.
[46:02.470 --> 46:08.410]  Most rural areas will have plenty of spectrum for anyone that wants to start a radio station after this bill goes through.
[46:08.410 --> 46:09.330]  So...
[46:09.330 --> 46:09.970]  All right.
[46:10.250 --> 46:12.370]  So, our time's up, but we'll be around here.
[46:12.650 --> 46:18.270]  You can catch us tomorrow at noon in the Hackerspace Village and we'll just be generally around for the rest of the conference.
[46:18.490 --> 46:18.950]  Thanks a lot.
[46:19.430 --> 46:20.470]  Thanks so much.
[46:20.630 --> 46:21.410]  Free the airwaves.
[46:30.270 --> 46:30.970]  All right.
[46:31.290 --> 46:32.810]  Coming up next in here...