By Alan J. Weissberger, alan at viodi.com When the US government ordered the transition to digital TV by Feb. 19, 2009, it did so to reclaim radio spectrum and reallocate the frequencies to public safety organizations and commercial broadband networks. In particular, frequencies until now used by UHF television are being opened up by the…

Speaking at Iowa Telecom Association’s Video Conference last week, Tom Wacker, Director of Government Affairs for NTCA, said the hot topics in Washington are the deficit, ethics and international issues. As a result, communications is not a top leadership priority. He spoke of a meeting NTCA had last week with House Speaker Pelosi, Congressman Rangel…

David Lepak, Vice President of Telechannel, provided a soup to nuts overview of the programming business and the challenges independent telcos face when adding cable television to their service offering. He talked of the trade-offs between being using an aggregator, a consultant or one’s own staff to acquire content. He suggested that the rights to…