Yesterday the FCC issued a Report and Order formally allowing AM radio stations to use FM translators to rebroadcast their signals.

The idea was first proposed nearly three years ago, and over the last 18 months or so the FCC's quietly been allowing AM stations to apply for translators to "fill in" existing gaps in their coverage areas. These gaps have been caused by the general degradation of the AM band, due to electromagnetic or radio-frequency interference (RFI) from a growing myriad of electronic devices and skywave signals from stronger co- or adjacent-channel stations.

I vehemently opposed this proposal, noting that the inherent noise-problems of the AM band will not be fixed by cramming more FM translators onto a separate (and unaffected) portion of the broadcast spectrum. Perhaps the FCC should first work to proactively minimize RFI on the AM dial, as it already has the statutory authority to do?

The Audio Division of the Media Bureau fundamentally disagreed, calling this ruling a part of its strategic plan to bring "relief" to AM broadcasters (something that's been in the works for more than a decade). While I find its justification somewhat tortuous, I am relieved to know somebody at the agency takes dissenting opinions seriously (I got stomped in the footnotes like never before).

In a nutshell, the FCC gave AM stations the ability to utilize as many translators as they need to effectively serve their primary coverage areas. However, it compromised on a very important point: as of now, only existing FM translators may be used (specifically defined as "those translator stations with licenses or permits in effect as of May 1, 2009"). This means that AM stations will not be allowed to mass-apply for new FM translator permits to effectively duplicate their AM service areas.

This is bad news for any AM broadcaster who didn't get in on the "Special Temporary Authority" gravy-train for new FM translators which had previously been in effect. But it's good news for owners of translators who are looking for buyers or lessors, and good news for aspiring LPFM broadcasters, in that some FM spectrum may still be available if the FCC ever opens its long-promised filing window for LP-10 (10-watt) LPFM stations.

Incidentally, Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell was the only one to issue a statement on the ruling, praising this "deregulatory action" in a most curious manner:

AM stations’ inability to reach all potential listeners within their existing authorized contours throughout the 24-hour day undermines our goals of fostering competition, localism and diversity because it deprives listeners of the news and talk programming that has become the hallmark of the AM band. The record before us confirms that many AM broadcasters do an excellent job of serving targeted demographics and interests within their communities. [Emphasis added]

Truth be told, it's not like the AM band is completely unusable at this point. The number of LPAM stations is growing, both of the legal (Part 15) variety and illicit (unlicensed) kind. The FCC's ruling is basically a mixed bag, neither a slam-dunk nor total loss; the kind of thing that makes media policy intriguingly infuriating.

How do you think they're going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?

The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!

That was from an interview with BusinessWeek magazine in November of 2005. With that, Ed Whitacre singularly ignited the telecom policy-firestorm of the decade - the debate over network neutrality.

Whitacre's major achievement during his 17-year tenure at AT&T was to to rebuild Ma Bell, first starting off with SBC, then acquiring Pacific Bell, Ameritech, BellSouth, Cingular, and, finally, the AT&T brand itself. AT&T is now the largest Internet Service Provider in the country; basically, nobody's data doesn't flow through the AT&T network at some point. We all found that out the hard way when it was disclosed that the company secretly let the U.S. government mass-wiretap its citizenry in the name of "national security." Currently, it has the iPhone nicely locked down.

It was only after creating a virtual oligopoly in the telecommunications (and especially ISP) market that Whitacre could boldly stand up and make the claim that nobody would use "these pipes" for free - even when we were (and still are) paying for them already (some of us twice, like me, both as an online content producer and consumer). It was Whitacre who flew the trial balloon for the notion of tiered/metered bandwidth consumption, content discrimination, and all that jazz.

To be perfectly clear: Whitacre and his ilk underinvested in his industry's infrastructure to create artificial scarcity in the marketplace in order to increase revenue and profits. When he left AT&T in 2007, he left behind a telecommunications industry that, relative to global indicators, was (and is) still stuck in the late 20th century.

In taking the wheel at General Motors, Whitacre admitted that he knows nothing about cars: "I guess I'll have to learn something about cars, other than how to drive them." (Then again, he's openly admitted to not knowing much about computers, either.) But not to worry: "A business is a business, and I think I can learn about cars. I'm not that old, and I think the business principles are the same."

If by "business" you mean mergers and acquisitions, well, sure, he knows how to do that. It's how he built his fame and fortune. But the auto industry? No built-in quasi-monopoly on the product to start with? What will Whitacre's GM gobble to fix its problems? Toyota? It is difficult to envision Ed and friends buying their way out of GM's predicament.

However, it's not completely insane: he was appointed by the Treasury Department, which is overseeing GM's bankruptcy-purgatory and now owns a controlling share of stock. Heaven knows just how much taxpayer subsidy Whitacre may wring out of the government as he "rebuilds" GM; he was chosen in part, after all, because of his well-connectedness in Washington, D.C.

Perhaps it's because he'll work on the cheap? While his new position's compensation has not been disclosed, Ed Whitacre left AT&T with a platinum-threaded, diamond-encrusted parachute worth north of $150 million (the total really depends on how long he lives - he still gets a minimum of $5.5 mil a year from AT&T in pension, plus all benefits and perks from the old gig, for life - and most of it tax-free), while AT&T's workers got screwed. This does not count the tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars he's already cashed out on in selling AT&T stock.

Given Ed Whitacre's track record at AT&T, this decision doesn't seem to make much business sense, and definitely shakes my faith in "change we can believe in." Those of us who lived through the Whitacre years in telecom definitely need to drop some knowledge on somebody in power about what we might expect of the "new" General Motors. So long as that guy's in charge, I'll never buy another GM vehicle again.

In an 18-page ruling, the D.C. Circuit basically tells the NAB to stuff it: "Congress did not intend to restrain the Commission’s authority to respond to new circumstances potentially threatening LPFM stations other than with respect to third-adjacent channel minimum separation requirements." Administratively, the Court could find no grounds to back the NAB's objections. Radio World says the trade organization "is studying the decision and its options," but the smart money is this horse is dead.

Why? Because the momentum is growing to pass a bill to expand LPFM anyway, and do away with most (but not all) of the restrictions placed on the service by Congressional fiat eight years ago. Recently, the Prometheus Radio Project scheduled a hybrid street-theatre/lobbying day in D.C., of which they made this cool video. The scuttlebutt is that the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet may vote soon to move the Local Community Radio Act up for full House Commerce Committee consideration. One of its sponsors, Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) told the Prometheus-organized policy briefing that "once we get this through the committee and onto the floor, I think we'll just sail it through the House."

The NAB is not the well-connected political juggernaut that it was close to a decade ago. If it has any sense it'll save its legal ammo in an attempt to try and challenge the LCRA if it becomes law (what's happening in the Senate with the bill is still a bit murky; the House version has 54 cosponsors, the Senate's version six). Not like that will be a fruitful challenge, but hell, it will fight what is basically no threat to its constituents' existence out principle. The NAB is just like that.

Unfortunately, it turns out that “going digital” in radio’s case is not going to happen via the distribution method of IBOC (In-Band On-Channel), but rather via the delivery mechanism of the Internet. Already the latter method has tens of millions of weekly listeners on PCs, plus millions more on smartphones (many in cars), while cumulative HD Radio sales are still under a million units. (And the gap is spreading.)

Radio’s effort to contain digitally-delivered radio to their scarce FCC-licensed frequencies has cost radio hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment upgrades — and, worse yet, more than $1 billion in wasted on-air promotion value.

And, meanwhile, most of the great Internet radio opportunities are being grabbed by outsiders....

Hanson's missive was posted just days before the iBiquity Corporation announced its newest client in the global HD Radio portfolio - Panama. According to the Panamanian government, the country would like to go all-digital within 10 years; good luck with that, as there's no functional, certified all-digital version of the HD protocol available yet.

Just how much of a milestone is this? Using iBiquity's own information, as well as publicly-available trade-press and national regulatory data, the map at right shows the score.

Countries in green indicate those where HD Radio has been certified as the digital audio broadcast (DAB) protocol-of-choice. These include the United States, the Philippines, and Panama.

Countries in red indicate those whose regulatory agencies have formally dismissed HD Radio as a viable digital radio protocol. These countries include Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

Countries in yellow indicate those who have either engaged in some (usually rudimentary) level of testing of the HD Radio protocol, or, in a very few cases, have allowed its limited and conditional deployment (but have not formally committed to HD as the national DAB standard). These countries include Argentina, Australia, Bosnia, Brazil, China, Colombia, the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, France, Indonesia, Jamaica, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, Thailand, the Ukraine, and Vietnam. In some of these instances, the tests were of limited duration and no further action has been taken by national regulators.

There's a lot of white on the map. I didn't color in those countries which have already chosen or are actively testing non-HD Radio broadcast standards (much of Asia and Western Europe, including countries like the UK and Germany). Much of the "industrialized world" is simply out of play. In addition, many countries (especially in Africa, eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East) have simply not thought much about making a digital radio transition as of yet - analog works just fine for them for now, thanks.

For iBiquity to claim that it has a "global presence" equates in truth to a claim once made by the last U.S. president who justified an unjust war because it was backed by a "coalition of the willing." No disrespect to its citizenry, but when Panama and the Philippines got your back, it's not like you're exactly poised to take over the world.

Unfortunately, the agency just missed hitting the 400 mark with enforcement actions last year - though due to the various methods by which the Enforcement Bureau inflates its enforcement statistics, it's safe to say that most likely fewer than 200 stations were actually "dimed" by the agency in some way last year.

2009 appears to have gotten off to a similarly inauspicious start: so far there have been 174 enforcement actions against unlicensed stations in 14 states; though with statistics-inflation in full effect the number of actual "pirates" tangibly affected is much lower.

As for the exercising of actual muscle, it's nearly non-existent: one $10K fine was issued this March from a case first opened in 2006; two stations in Florida have been raided and three people arrested (these were conducted at the behest of local authorities - one "promoted gangs" and the other called itself "One Love Radio," so damn yr stereotypes); and of all the enforcement actions logged so far in 2009, only two originate from alleged complaints of interference.

This is not to say that the FCC can't get feisty at times, although it's very selective about when and how. For example, EB field agents unleashed a tizzy when they visited Boulder Free Radio recently and left behind a note claiming that they don't need a warrant to search the premises (a dubious claim debunked nine years ago). At the same time, the widespread abuse of amateur radio frequencies by on-duty Indianapolis police officers passed by with little more than a slap on the wrist earlier this year.

As I've said before, so long as there's more of us than them, we're winning.

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I call bullsh*t, and it's an easy one. Any simple WHOIS domain-name search turns up the obvious: iBiquity owns HDRadio.com. Administrative and technical contacts point straight back to the corporate HQ.

My question is, why all the disclaimage? And are you really that clueless, iBiquity? Are you effectively denying the validity/credibility of your consumer-marketing claims? (After all, HDRadio.com is the company's consumer-marketing portal.) What's so different about what how you'll "perform or interact" with my computer, or your "security and privacy policies" vis-a-vis iBiquity.com and HDRadio.com? Are you so desperate to generate consumer interest in your dying product that you're stretching online data-collection regulations? Hiding behind a trademark-disclaimer - that HDRadio.com is "managed" by the HD Radio Alliance - which is, for all intents and purposes, iBiquity (though that particular domain is registered to Clear Channel) - does not cut the mustard.

I've been around iBiquity's site before, and this is, apparently, an "upgrade" of its "functionality." Much like the HD Radio technology itself, it's a questionable development.