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The National Association of Broadcasters is helping the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) compile a report on the importance of over-the-air broadcasting in times of emergencies.
ITU said the report would be ready by April 2014, with National Association of Broadcasters senior VP of technology Lynn Claudy tasked with helping compile the report.
“Emergency broadcasting plays a critical role in the rapid dissemination of information to the public, and is a key element in helping save lives in the aftermath of natural disasters,” ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun I. Touré said in announcing the new study,
Broadcasters have been making that point repeatedly in arguing that the FCC should not be in a hurry to move from the one-to-many architecture of broadcasting to the one-to-one cellular mobile broadband service expected to get broadcast spectrum in the incentive auctions.
The NAB may want to add the following ITU comment to its next FCC filing, which reads like it came directly from the broadcaster playbook.
“Radio and television broadcasting provides reliable point-to-multipoint delivery of essential information and safety advice to the public as well as to first responders and others via widely available consumer receivers, both mobile and fixed,” ITU said in announcing the study. “Even in cases where electricity and mobile-phone base stations are no longer available, reception of broadcast signals is still possible with battery-operated receivers in cars and in handheld devices such as mobile phones equipped with a radio or TV receiver.”
