Well, they are waves and they do travel through the atmosphere.
I was trying to bone up on the National Telecommunications & Information Administration’s contract with IBM for the digital-to-analog converter box program, which required surfing to www.fbo.gov, the clearinghouse of information on government contracts.
That program will help analog viewers make sense out of those electromagnetic waves after they begin carrying only digital information through the atmosphere to a TV set near you.
I kept missing the entry because I was searching for NTIA. Turns out the converter-box program isn’t the only thing NTIA outsources.
The contracting process was actually undertaken by, not NTIA, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is also a part of the Department of Commerce. I finally found the announcement of IBM’s winning bid–or was it a single-source contract–after putting in "converter box" (Duh!), which yielded the following.
The contracting officer told me that NOAA handles all of the contracting chores for NTIA.
Go figure.
