Some Arkansas television stations will be changing frequencies in order to make more of the airwaves available for 5G and other high-speed mobile broadband service.
That means changes for people who watch free over the air TV. Jean Kiddoo, chair of the FCC Incentive Task Force, says viewers will need to watch for notices from their local stations about when they are going to be making changes and rescan their televisions or converter boxes to pick up the new frequencies.
"It's a good rule of thumb that if they notice that a channel goes missing over the next year and a half or so they should try rescanning their TV because chances are that's probably what happened," says Kiddoo.
There is a limited amount of airwaves and a lot of demand for it. Kiddoo says the FCC is trying to allocate it as efficiently as they can.
"We are consolidating TV stations into a smaller range of frequencies so that we can make room and use it more efficiently for wireless carriers," she says. "So the TV stations in the new band will need to change frequencies to accommodate that change."
Kiddo says the benefits of this change is using fewer airwaves to free up space for wireless services and high-speed mobile services that consumers are demanding more of every day.
For help with rescanning televisions, the FCC has offered information on their website available here.