Distributed transmission system (DTS) broadcasting's prospects are helped by the Metropolitan TV Alliance's request to test the technology in N.Y.C., said Merrill Weiss, a consultant who has works with DTS. "Certainly, that adds credibility to what we've been doing elsewhere," Weiss said. DTS allows TV broadcasters to use multiple, smaller towers transmitting, in a cell-like grid, identical signals to provide over-the-air TV coverage to receivers underserved by a traditional high-power tall broadcast tower. N.Y. broadcasters lost their perch atop the World Trade Center in 2001 and have since leased space on the Empire State Building. Aug. 2, a consortium of N.Y.C. TV stations asked the Commission's permission to test a DTS system...

The test's success is assured, said New America Foundation Wireless Future Program Research Dir. J.H. Snider. "Obviously it's going to be successful. It's mundane technology. There's no uncertainty about it," he said. But if the FCC continues to grant test licenses, it will effectively shape major policy without administrative review, he said: "If you start something like this, can you stop it... Before we go ahead and do this type of thing, we ought to do the policy first."

The Commission hasn't issued a DTS order despite having completed public comment on an NPRM 6 months ago, Weiss said. "When the Commission adopted the second period DTV review report and order it said it would work it on a fast track... Now we're approaching 6 months since the comment period closed. I don't know what timetable they're on"...

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