Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1530210
26 PRODUCTION SOUND & VIDEO – Winter 2025 WMAS: Next Generation Most of the UHF band is clogged full of TV stations, especially in major metro areas such as Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. A few major cities also lose spectrum to the T Band, which is reserved for emergency services. In Los Angeles, that covers 470MHz-488MHz and 506MHz-512MHz. This link provides a list of all cities with T Band deployed frequencies and what those frequencies are: https://wiki.radioreference.com/index. php/UHF-T_Band. So, for production sound specialists, the question becomes how do we fit higher channel counts into this ever-shrinking RF world even with the more spectrally efficient digital systems? One way is to lobby the FCC for other areas of the spectrum. This is currently happening, with companies like Shure being a leading voice for the wireless community. The last two decades have represented a seismic shift for our RF environment. In 2008, the FCC sold off the 700MHz frequency band to the highest bidder with only a few small parts reserved for emergency services. Then again in 2017, they sold another large chunk of spectrum. TV stations and all other existing UHF users were relocated to the lower end of the band. Another auction saw the 616MHz to 698MHz bands sold, with a majority of it being bought by T-Mobile for cellular telephone expansion. Wireless microphone users were relegated to the gaps between TV stations and the very few other open frequencies of the spectrum. Our current bands to operate in with either no license or a Part 74 license are as follows: VHF 174-230MHz UHF 470-608MHz UHF Guard Band 614-616MHz UHF Duplex Gap 653-663MHz STL Band 940-960MHz by Ryan Pedersen