1. Delay will not move a single consumer off of the wait list for converter-box coupons, and will require $650 million in the stimulus bill.

• Delay will jeopardize the spectrum that the transition clears for police, firefighters and emergency personnel, and that public safety officials said five years to the day before Sept. 11 they needed. In its report, the 9/11 Commission endorsed transition years ago.
• Delay will jeopardize the spectrum that the transition clears for advanced wireless services, perhaps our nation’s best and quickest way to improve broadband deployment, bring real economic stimulus, and create jobs.
• That’s why the Fraternal Order of Police opposes the delay bill.

2. The program that provides consumers $40 coupons for converter boxes has not run out of money.

• Only half of the $1.5 billion in the coupon program has been spent on redeemed coupons.
• The coupons expire 90 days after issuance if not used. About 300,000 coupons expire every week, and the unused funding is used to cover more coupons.

3. We could immediately resume sending coupons even before existing ones expire by authorizing another $250 million, which the Barton-Stearns bill, H.R. 661, does. Experience shows that we could get most or all of that money back in unused coupons at the end.

4. Industry has spent more than $1 billion publicizing the February 17 date. It worked.

• Nielsen says that as of the middle of January 2009, 94.3 percent of homes already had one or more TVs ready for the transition because sets were digital, or connected to cable, satellite or a converter box.
• Only exclusively over-the-air homes – no cable, no satellite, no digital TV set, no converter box – are at risk of losing all reception. Nielsen says of 112 million TV households in America, 14.3 million are exclusively over-the-air homes. We have already sent coupons to 13.5 million of them. That means that only 800,000 exclusively over-the-air households have not yet received a coupon.
• Approximately 600,000 of them are on the wait list, but the $250 million will get them off the list. That means there are only 200,000 homes that have done nothing. That’s less than 2 percent of exclusively over-the-air homes, and less than two-tenths of a percent of all TV homes.
• Nothing prevents those homes from buying a converter box without a coupon, before or after the transition. We can help homes get coupons and converter boxes if they want them, but a small group will always be unresponsive.