[Hen] ITFS (currently EBS) licensing (resent in TEXT form)

Johnson, Bill bjohnson at onenet.net
Sun Jan 15 13:30:46 CST 2006


To Whom may hold ITFS licenses;

Your school may hold ITFS licenses and you may not know it. I've had
several inquiries from such schools.  Please take a min to read the
following;

 
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What is ITFS? (from www.itfs.org)

802.11b and g are 2.4GHz. ITFS is 2.5GHz and 2.6GHz

The Instructional Television Fixed Service (ITFS) is a band of twenty
(20) microwave channels available to be licensed by the FCC to local
credit granting educational institutions. It was designed to serve as a
means for educational institutions to deliver live or pre-recorded video
instruction to multiple sites within school districts and to higher
education branch campuses. In recognition of the variety and quantity of
materials required to support instruction at numerous grade levels and
in a range of subjects, licensees were typically granted a group of four
channels. Its low capital and operating costs as compared to broadcast
television, technical quality that compared favorably with broadcast
television, and its multi-channel per licensees feature made ITFS an
extremely cost effective vehicle for the delivery of educational
materials. There are currently several hundred ITFS systems in operation
delivering schedules of live and pre-recorded instruction

The FCC initially authorized ITFS to operate using a one-way, analog,
line-of-sight technology. Typical installations included up to four
transmitters multiplexed through a single broadcast antenna with
directional receive antennas at each receive site. Receive site
installations included equipment to down convert the microwave channels
for viewing on standard television receivers. In typical installations,
the down converted ITFS signals were distributed to classrooms over
multi-channel closed circuit television systems.

In the late 1980's the FCC recognized that many ITFS licensees lacked
the technical expertise and/or the financial means to make effective use
of ITFS.  Subsequently, the FCC authorized ITFS licensees to lease a
portion of their spectrum, designated as "Excess Capacity," for
commercial use. ITFS licensees were required to retain forty hours per
week per channel for instruction with the excess available for
commercial use in exchange for technical and financial support for their
instructional service. Using ITFS excess capacity and up to thirteen
channels in the companion commercial service, the Multi-Multipoint
Distribution Service (MMDS}, a number of telecommunications companies
built wireless cable systems. The number of available channels, however,
proved to be insufficient to compete effectively with the expanding
channel capacity of cable TV.

ITFS and MMDS licensees then sought FCC authorization to employ digital
compression technology, which would substantively increase the number of
program streams that could be carried on the channels of the combined
ITFS and MMDS spectrum.

In1998, the FCC approved the use of digital compression in ITFS. At the
time digital compression technology was expected to expand the number of
program steams by a ratio of 4 to 1 or more. The FCC also authorized
both cellular and two-way operations in the ITFS/MMDS services and the
potential for ITFS to be used for the distribution of data, as well as
video.  In the same rule, the FCC reduced the capacity that educational
licensees were required to retain for instruction from forty hours per
week per channel to 5%
of channel capacity. In permitting two-way operations the FCC created
the first potential for a substantial use of instructional materials
that rely on interaction between the instructional program and learners.

The expanded programming capacity provided by digital compression
encouraged a number of commercial entities to create wireless
entertainment video systems. These systems found, however, that the
additional programming capability was not sufficient to overcome the
line-of-sight handicap and the associated higher cost for customer
installations. It was clear that while video distribution was a viable
educational service for ITFS, commercial video services could not be
widely successful in the ITFS/MMDS spectrum.

In 1999, telecommunication interests associated with the cell phone
industry sought o obtain FCC approval for the transfer of portions of
the ITFS spectrum from educational use to support a proposed 3G (Third
Generation) cell phone technology. In 2001, the FCC ruled to preserve
the ITFS spectrum for education and further modified the rules to
authorize the use of the spectrum in mobile operations and voice
communications.

For details see 2004 Presentations at http://itfs.org/index/articles

On July 28, the FCC released the full text of its Report and Order on
ITFS/MMDS. See:

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-04-135A1.pdf (for
pdf format), or
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-04-135A1.doc (for
Word format).

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The State Regents holds 30 or so of these licenses since 1970 which were
used as part of our original TIS system. I have spoken to several
schools who were surprised to find that during the 1980s, some one from
their school agreed to sign an application for some company they had not
heard of before who promised to pay them monthly for use of a license
the FCC would grant to the school.  Today, those have become much more
valuable because of the 802.11b and g hardware and the understanding of
what can be done with such spectrum.
Below is a list of Oklahoma Schools who hold ITFS licenses. The second
number from the left is the Call Letters. The 10 digit number to the
right is the FRN for the licensee. If your school is a Licensee, this is
your number. I hope this information is useful to some of you.  More
info can be found on at the FCC's Universal License Search page at
http://wireless.fcc.gov/uls/

I plan to attend the National ITFS Association's meeting in San Antonio
Feb 20. If you plan on being there, please let me know. info can be
found at www.itfs.org 

If you would like to join a discussion group of Oklahoma ITFS licensees,
drop me a line.

Bill Johnson
Director of Network Operations - OneNet

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--
19 KGF21    OKLAHOMA STATE REGENTS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION 0006129530 ED
Active 12/09/2014 
27 WHR559   OKLAHOMA EDUCATIONAL TV AUTHORITIY 0005048400 ED Active
07/19/2009 
28 WHR791   THE TRUST OF OKLAHOMA CITY UNIV. 0008248221 ED Active
02/13/2011 
35 WLX251   THE TRUSTEES OF OKLAHOMA CITY UNIV. 0008248221 ED Active
02/13/2011 
36 WLX350   NORTH AMERICAN CATHOLIC EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING FOUNDATION,
INC. 0006686018 ED Active 09/25/2011 
37 WLX397   PLATT COLLEGE 0007165202 ED Active 09/04/2011 
38 WLX505   WETUMKA PUBLIC SCHOOLS I-005 0001705599 ED Active 03/31/2012

39 WLX553   HOLDENVILLE SCHOOL DISTIRCT 0006662514 ED Active 04/27/2012 
40 WLX554   WEWOKA PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0006662480 ED Active 04/27/2012 
41 WLX596   NOWATA PUBLIC SCHOOLS   ED Active 07/13/2002 
42 WLX605   UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT #286 0004335717 ED Active 07/24/2012

43 WLX611   UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT #332 0002335016 ED Active 07/29/2012

44 WLX628   KINGMAN UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT #331 0007054208 ED Active
08/12/2012 
45 WLX650   STRATFORD PUBLIC SCHOOL 0007093644 ED Active 09/16/2012 
46 WLX672   Hispanic Information and Telecommunications Network, Inc.
0006620348 ED Active 09/28/2012 
47 WLX772   RUSH SPRINGS PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007098627 ED Active 01/28/2014 
48 WLX812   ADA PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0001690148 ED Active 03/10/2013 
49 WLX845   PERRY PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0000710773 ED Active 04/30/2013 
50 WLX849   YALE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007109218 ED Active 04/30/2013 
51 WLX858   TURNER INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT 0007921497 ED Active
05/05/2003 
52 WLX859   ALEX PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007909393 ED Active 05/05/2013 
53 WLX890   MORRISON PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007099187 ED Active 05/26/2013 
54 WLX895   PAOLI PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007076334 ED Active 06/01/2013 
55 WLX935   BYNG PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007054372 ED Active 07/23/2013 
56 WLX947   ARNETT PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007113103 ED Active 08/20/2003 
57 WLX952   UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT #511 0002330694 ED Active 09/21/2013

58 WLX965   SEILING PUBLIC SCHOOL 0001689348 ED Active 09/28/2013 
59 WMH376   ESTA CALLAHAM, JOHN B. CALLAHAM AND ANGELA G. WHISENHUNT
BR Active 05/01/2011 
68 WNC225   MOORELAND PUBLIC SCHOOL 0007947484 ED Active 02/14/2014 
69 WNC227   RIPLEY SCHOOLS 0007940943 ED Active 03/07/2014 
70 WNC262   ALLEN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0006743850 ED Active 04/04/2014 
71 WNC280   FRONTIER PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0001700194 ED Active 05/12/2014 
72 WNC356   Independent School District No. 11 0011291176 ED Active
07/26/2014 
73 WNC377   GORE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0005783758 ED Active 08/02/2014 
74 WNC383   CARL ALBERT STATE COLLEGE (SALLISAW CAMPUS) 0007098403 ED
Active 08/23/2014 
75 WNC445   VAN BUREN PUBLIC SCHOOL 0006910996 ED Active 09/30/2014 
76 WNC468   FORT SMITH PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0008339095 ED Active 10/20/2014 
77 WNC497   Wilson Public Schools 0004548921 ED Active 11/22/2014 
78 WNC498   EAST CENTRAL UNIVERSITY 0006999742 ED Active 11/22/2014 
79 WNC499   OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY 0007055288 ED Active 11/08/2014 
80 WNC500   DICKSON PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007920044 ED Active 12/09/2014 
81 WNC501   ARDMORE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007075856 ED Active 12/09/2014 
82 WNC511   DETROIT INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT 0007909666 ED Active
12/08/2014 
83 WNC512   ROXTON INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT 0007076078 ED Active
12/08/2014 
84 WNC515   BROKEN ARROW PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007941008 ED Active 10/12/2014 
85 WNC516   INDIAN CAPITAL AREA VOCATIONAL TECHNICAL SCHOOL 0007043383
ED Active 12/22/2014 
86 WNC517   ENID HIGH SCHOOL 0007912033 ED Active 12/23/2014 
87 WNC520   WESTERN TECHNOLOGY CENTER 0007000441 ED Active 12/23/2014 
88 WNC528   FT. GIBSON SCHOOLS 0007685712 ED Active 12/08/2014 
89 WNC542   OKAY PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007024391 ED Active 02/10/2015 
90 WNC544   MIAMI PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007282437 ED Active 02/10/2015 
91 WNC545   MARLOW PUBLIC SCHOOLS ISD 0007007974 ED Active 03/17/2015 
92 WNC549   OLUSTEE PUBLIC SCHOOL 0007093206 ED Active 03/09/2015 
93 WNC555   WARNER PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007068158 ED Active 02/28/2015 
94 WNC562   SOUTHWESTERN OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERITY 0005099510 ED Active
03/21/2015 
95 WNC568   PHILLIPS UNIVERSITY 0008233256 ED Active 03/27/2005 
96 WNC575   COMANCHE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0008230914 ED Active 03/20/2015 
97 WNC577   CLINTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007165277 ED Active 03/20/2015 
98 WNC578   WEATHERFORD HOSP AUTHORITY DBA SOUTHWEST MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
0006999932 ED Active 03/20/2005 
99 WNC579   WEATERFORD PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007054588 ED Active 03/22/2015 
100 WNC580   WESTERN TECHNICAL CENTER 0007000441 ED Active 03/22/2015 
101 WNC595   Prairiland Consolidated Independent Schools 0007096431 ED
Active 04/19/2015 
102 WNC596   CHISUM INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT 0005143722 ED Active
04/19/2015 
103 WNC598   SE Oklahoma State University 0007578693 ED Active
04/19/2015 
104 WNC660   KIOWA PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007057201 ED Active 05/25/2015 
105 WNC662   MORRIS SCHOOL DISTRICT 0007903537 ED Active 06/01/2015 
106 WNC683   ST JOHNS PRIVATE SCHOOL 0007720576 ED Active 06/30/2015 
107 WNC690   PAULS VALLEY PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007903693 ED Active 07/05/2005

108 WNC696   EAST CENTRAL UNIVERSITY 0006999742 ED Active 07/14/2015 
109 WNC697   HASKELL SCHOOL DISTRICT 0007092505 ED Active 07/14/2005 
110 WNC714   ALTUS PUBLIC SCHOOLS, DISTRICT #18 0007043144 ED Active
09/23/2015 
111 WNC722   OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY 0007055288 ED Active 10/24/2015 
112 WNC757   RED RIVER VO TECH SCHOOL 0006034011 ED Active 04/23/2006 
113 WNC758   Southwestern Oklahoma State University 0005099510 ED Active
04/23/2006 
114 WNC920   REDLANDS COMMUNITY COLLEGE 0007909781 ED Active 08/19/2007 
115 WNC921   THOMAS PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007941040 ED Active 08/19/2007 
116 WNC922   ST. PETER & PAUL PRIVATE SCHOOLS 0007947427 ED Active
08/19/2007 
117 WNC972   MCCURTAIN COUNTY HIGHER EDUC PROG   ED Active 08/28/2007 
118 WNC973   IDABEL PUBLIC SCHOOLS   ED Active 08/28/2007 
119 WNC974   BROKEN BOW PUBLIC SCHOOLS   ED Active 07/18/2007 
120 WNC977   STUART PUBLIC SCHOOLS 0007903586 ED Active 07/18/2007 
121 WND522   EAST CENTRAL UNIVERSITY 0006999742 ED Active 08/30/2009 
122 WND535   N. AMER CATH ED PROGRAM FOUND INC 0006686018 ED Active
01/05/2010 
123 WND536   OKLAHOMA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY 0001689082 ED Active
02/09/2010 
124 WND537   TRI-COUNTY AREA VOCATIONAL TECHNICAL CENTER 0006965339 ED
Active 02/09/2010 
125 WND678   Dewey Public Schools #I-7 0001690023 ED Active 02/28/2013 

Bill Johnson
Director of Network Operations - OneNet
Director - Netrad Infrastructure for CASA
405-225-9444
cell 405-919=1718
video 164.58.250.185



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