BitPath: Broadcasters Have Shown They Won't Degrade 1.0 Service

The “time has long since passed” to be concerned that broadcasters might degrade their ATSC 1.0 service to roll out 3.0, wrote BitPath CEO John Hane in a letter to the FCC posted in docket 16-142 Friday. A draft item on sunsetting some ATSC 3.0 requirements is on circulation on the 10th floor (see 2303130068). After four years of transition, “with stations in many dozens of markets providing well over 800 streams of programming in ATSC 3.0,” no one “has heard the slightest whimper of complaint of any actual service loss or degradation to viewers, or of any inconvenience to MVPDs,” Hane said. Broadcasters aren’t seeking to relax some rules on the transition to degrade their services, he said: “They need different transition rules to continue introducing and to improve NextGen TV service while continuing to preserve the greatest possible degree of legacy DTV service.”