RF Shorts – Feb. 17, 2011

By Doug Lung
published

  • •Michael J. De La Merced wrote in the New York Times DealBook section EchoStar in $1.3 Billion Deal for Hughes Communications. Hughes provides broadband satellite services, products and network solutions. Its HughesNet could allow Dish to offer customer Internet as well as video services. See the Press Release for additional info. Several news outlets, including Reuters, announced today that EchoStar terminates deal with TerreStar. EchoStar is TerreStar's largest unsecured creditor. The Wall Street Journal reported TerreStar Scraps EchoStar Plan. TerreStar is currently in bankruptcy.
  • •SmartGorillas.com has a posting noting that MobiTV awarded top honors for mobile TV. The article notes that "MobiTV was the first company to bring live TV to mobile devices and continues to lead a growing industry. The company has leveraged its mobile expertise and extended it to create a converged solution with a platform that is capable of delivering media to any device, any operating system and any network." At CES, the Mobile Content Venture (NBC, Fox, ION and several broadcast groups in "Pearl 9") announced it was partnering with MobiTV to bring ATSC Mobile DTV to portable and handheld devices.
  • •William K. Keane, writes about Mobile Internet Access: The Service That Ate the Radio Spectrum on Mondaq.com, noting that "It may not be surprising that TV broadcasters and other licensees, which have invested collectively many billions of dollars in equipment and infrastructure premised on continued use of their bands, have not been shy about raising their concerns to policy makers at the FCC and on Capitol Hill. This also goes for federal users like the Department of Defense and others that may face dislocations, which can impact operational capability and national security." He concludes that "While the public may know little about this struggle, the outcome is likely to have a profound impact on the American economy, security and lifestyle for many years to come."
  • •Using technology to increase spectrum efficiency is another way to address increased demand for wireless broadband. The press release, Texas Instruments' New Multistandard Wireless Base Station SoC Drives Performance and Efficiency to Record Levels says "For the first time in an integrated base station SoC, TI's innovative architecture enables iterative decoding techniques, such as turbo interference cancellation, which can yield up to 40 percent or more spectral efficiency over conventional decoding techniques." For more information see the TM320TCI6618 Product Bulletin and data sheet.
Doug Lung
Doug Lung

Doug Lung is one of America's foremost authorities on broadcast RF technology. As vice president of Broadcast Technology for NBCUniversal Local, H. Douglas Lung leads NBC and Telemundo-owned stations’ RF and transmission affairs, including microwave, radars, satellite uplinks, and FCC technical filings. Beginning his career in 1976 at KSCI in Los Angeles, Lung has nearly 50 years of experience in broadcast television engineering. Beginning in 1985, he led the engineering department for what was to become the Telemundo network and station group, assisting in the design, construction and installation of the company’s broadcast and cable facilities. Other projects include work on the launch of Hawaii’s first UHF TV station, the rollout and testing of the ATSC mobile-handheld standard, and software development related to the incentive auction TV spectrum repack. A longtime columnist for TV Technology, Doug is also a regular contributor to IEEE Broadcast Technology. He is the recipient of the 2023 NAB Television Engineering Award. He also received a Tech Leadership Award from TV Tech publisher Future plc in 2021 and is a member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society and the Society of Broadcast Engineers.