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WASHINGTON -- A Senate committee has taken the first step toward forcing television stations to end analog broadcasts, so the vacated spectrum can be used for new commercial wireless service and for public safety agencies.

The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation on Thursday approved a bill to set April 7, 2009, as the date that all U.S. TV stations must move to digital broadcasts and vacate the upper 700MHz radio frequency spectrum. The committee voted down an amendment, offered by Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) to move the digital television (DTV) transition deadline to April 7, 2007.

The full Senate will still need to approve the DTV transition bill. A House committee is expected to take up its own DTV transition bill as early as next week.

Rationale for Dates

McCain and other supporters of a 2007 date argued that an earlier date could save lives in emergencies by getting the powerful spectrum into the hands of public safety agencies more quickly. But committee chairman Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, urged the committee to reject McCain's amendment, saying an earlier date could reduce the amount of money the government expects to raise in commercial auctions for the part of the spectrum not targeted toward emergency responders.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the auctions will bring in $10 billion, and a separate congressional budget resolution has targeted at least $4.8 billion of that money toward the U.S. general treasury. The committee's bill has the auctions beginning in January 2008, but an auction scheduled earlier could result in lower bids, the CBO has said.

Stevens reminded committee members that Senate rules require the committee stick to the budget resolution and set aside at least $4.8 billion for the general fund, but Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) suggested the CBO may have underestimated the amount the auctions will raise.

Kerry noted that some estimates have the spectrum auctions raising $20 billion or more. Saving lives during terrorist attacks or natural disasters should be a higher priority than budget rules, Kerry said.

"It doesn't make sense for me to have budget policy ... take precedence over homeland security," said Kerry, who supported the McCain amendment.

Emergency Spectrum Wanted

Following the September 11, 2001, terrorists attacks on the U.S., the national 9/11 Commission recommended that police, firefighters, and other emergency responders should have additional radio spectrum where multiple emergency response agencies can communicate with each other. In many cases, the multiple emergency response agencies responding to the September 11 attacks couldn't communicate with each other because their radios operated on different spectrum bands.

The upper 700MHz spectrum allows for a stronger signal than many other spectrum bands, with each wireless tower covering about twice as large an area as a tower transmitting in the 1900MHz band, where many cell phones operate, according to backers of a DTV transition. That makes the 700MHz better for long-range data services such as WiMax and for rural broadband services, when part of the upper 700MHz spectrum is auctioned off for commercial uses.

Under current law, broadcasters are required to give up their analog spectrum by the end of 2006, but only in television markets where 85 percent of homes can receive digital signals.

In December 1997, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted to reallocate some frequencies in the 700MHz band to public safety and new commercial uses, in exchange for the digital spectrum TV stations received. Most television markets would never reach the 85 percent digital threshold now in law without a hard DTV deadline, say critics, including McCain.

TV viewers with cable television service will not be affected by the DTV transition, because cable TV service can convert digital signals to work with analog sets. But at least 80 million television sets in the U.S. currently receive analog over-the-air signals, according to a survey released in June by Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America.

Alerting Consumers

The committee bill doesn't include funding for a consumer education program on the DTV transition, and the Senate will have to pass legislation to provide education funding, said Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida). "Most of the consumers have no idea how this transition is going to work," Nelson said. "Most consumers have no idea their TVs will go dark."

The commerce committee's bill sets a hard deadline and allocates $3 billion of the expected $10 billion in auction revenues toward subsidies for television viewers with analog TV sets to buy converter boxes. The committee bill raised the amount going to the general treasury from $4.8 billion to $5 billion, with the rest of the money going to a variety of programs, including nearly $1.3 billion for emergency communications. The committee approved a bill to provide up to $75 million of the auction funds to the government's essential air service program, which funds airline service to rural communities.

After McCain's objections to the 2009 transition deadline, Stevens said he plans to introduce an amendment on the Senate floor that would rush the funding for emergency communications.

Many technology companies have pushed for a DTV hard date. IT companies including IBM, Microsoft, and Intel are members of the High Tech DTV Coalition, which has pushed for Congress to set a deadline.

Motorola said Thursday that a hard date was required to make "much-needed" improvements to the emergency communications infrastructure.

"Americans know well that disasters can strike at any moment," said Bill Anaya, the company's senior director of congressional operations, in a statement. "First responders deserve the best advanced, interoperable communications tools so they can protect our hometowns."