Members of the team developing the FCC’s National Broadband Plan...

the plan. Carlos Kirjner, a member of the team who is now at analyst at Sanford Bernstein, revealed in a recent research report that during a dinner as the plan was being developed a high-tech executive sketched out a plan on a napkin showing how the FCC could repackage the broadcast band to take advantage of the fact that now that the transition to DTV is complete, “6 MHz had the capacity to carry up to 5 or 6 standard definition TV channels,” Kirjner wrote. Under the proposal, “broadcasters could continue to operate their primary channels offering standard definition TV service to the 10 percent or so of households that still use free over-the-air as their main source of TV, meeting whatever was left of the initial ‘public interest’ in full or in near-totality, while freeing up valuable spectrum to be allocated, most probably through auctions or other market-based mechanisms, to the most valuable (to the country) use.” Staff analyzed the proposal and found that it could have freed up 186 MHz. “This could have been revolutionary,” Kirjner wrote. “That much spectrum, in those bands, could simultaneously achieve many previously competing objectives.” The plan would have provided enough spectrum for AT&T and Verizon to grow their networks while getting competitors including T-Mobile, Leap and MetroPCS much of what they need, he said. “Fast forward two-and-a-half years and look at what we got. … We may get 60-80 MHz, if that, as the total amount will depend on broadcasters’ willingness to part with their licenses in a two-sided incentives auction yet to be designed and conducted, a process that we think will take at least 2 years.” Levin confirmed most of the details, though he laughed in pointing out the technologist used a placemat, not a napkin. “It was a very interesting plan -- slightly too complicated for a napkin -- and it would have had a very dramatic effect,” Levin told us. “Unfortunately, we were in the process of developing the plan when the leadership of the commission kind of publicly said things that essentially took it off the table.” Scuttling the proposal before it could become part of the discussions was “unfortunate,” even though it stood little chance of being adopted as sketched out on the placemat, Levin said. “It was a process mistake, it was a policy mistake and, frankly, a political mistake to take ideas like that off the table. But that’s what happened.” A recent study found that 15 percent of households still rely on over the air TV and the number is growing, NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton said in response. “NAB is looking forward, not backward, as we work with the FCC to implement incentive auction legislation that recognizes broadcasting as an indispensable daily source of local news, entertainment, sports and lifesaving weather information,” he said. “Because of the cord-cutter and cord-never phenomenon, broadcasting’s relevance and importance will only grow.”