Two notables in spectrum policy, Bennett Kobb and Don Messer, recently filed comments in the FCC’s inquiry into the potential expansion of the FM band. While not directly related to the DoD testing of Digital Radio Mondiale in Alaska, the comments make a strong case for considering the 26 MHz band be a perfect space for utilizing DRM to provide a new class of local radio stations.
The comments, while brief, are very specific about the benefits of extending DRM to uses other than those currently considered in the ongoing testing. While it’s not a formal proposal for rulemaking, it’s an interesting seed planted in this ongoing policy story.
Benn Kobb and Don Messer know of what they speak: Kobb wrote the Wireless Spectrum Finder, the definitive guide to the classification and use of spectrum. Messer is an engineer who “chaired the Technical Committee of the http://www.drm.org/meta/consortium/ during 2000-2007 and was the initiator and a principal author of the DRM Broadcaster’s User Manual. He was until recently the Chief, Spectrum Division, at the Voice of America, and was also chairman of the National Radio Systems Committee’s evaluation and standardization groups for what is now HD Radio.” That last little credential is particularly interesting.
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