Fundraising drive on commercial radio WIZZ-1520 (Greenfield, MA)

[Tim Coco]

I have to agree with Garrett that cell service has improved greatly and,
depending on the carrier, is quite reliable.  I use Sprint's unlimited plan
(love the plan and coverage, hate the company, but that's another story) to
listen to Internet radio on my Treo using PocketTunes.  I haven't lost my
signal at all (yet anyway) traveling between Boston and as far as Meredith,
New Hampshire.

Because of the limited bandwidth, say 32kbps, MP3 streams aren't full
fidelity, but better than car AM radios.  Stations streaming in AACPlus,
however, sound great!

Tim Coco
President & General Manager
WHAV

-----Original Message-----
From: Garrett Wollman [mailto:wollman@bimajority.org] 
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 1:06 AM
To: Don A
Cc: boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org
Subject: Re: Fundraising drive on commercial radio WIZZ-1520 (Greenfield,
MA)

<<On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:56:40 -0400, "Don A" <donald_astelle@yahoo.com>
said:

> I have to disagree garrett.  Maybe in metro Boston....but in the burbs 
> outside 128, NH and here in VT...there are lots of dead spots.

> It's getting better...but in my experiene there are still a lot of 
> dead spots...and the public would never put up with trying to 'radio' 
> that way in it's current state.

The population in those places is not all that significant to start with,
and is becoming less so every year.  Most of "the public"
doesn't live in rural areas any more.

The real fight is going to be over the sort of licensing that will be
required for these systems.  The computer industry wants unlicensed, or at
most "lite licensed", spectrum to predominate; the entrenched
telecommunications companies (cell and landline carriers) want
heavy-licensed, exclusive spectrum allocations with the concomitant spectrum
auctions and very high barriers to entry, to maintain their oligopoly and
make it uneconomical for potential competitors to gain a foothold (unless
their names begin with "Google" or "Microsoft" and have billions to throw
away in the name of market share).

-GAWollman