Big Five want analogue spectrum for mobile devices

5 May 2008 | 12:32 BST

By Tony Dennis

Pump up the airwaves

A REPORT commissioned by the Big Five of the mobile industry - Ericsson, Nokia, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone – suggests that a major chunk of ex-analogue TV spectrum should be handed over for mobile broadband.

To make this palatable to industry regulators, the report's author, Spectrum Value Partners, suggests that by doing so the European economy would get a boost of at least €95 billion over the next 20 years.

It also hints darkly that if regulators and EU governments faff about then a delay of just three years would cost Europe €20 billion.

The motivation for pushing such a policy by the Big Five is clear. If there's a Europe-wide agreement, then economies of scale would kick in – just as it did with GSM.

It's a big gamble, however. The plan would involve allocating the mobile network operators around 92 MHz of spectrum – including a 12 MHz 'guard band' to prevent interference.

Considering that's something like a quarter of all the spectrum that's being freed up, it's going to cheese off the traditional TV companies and broadcasters who've come to regard all of that spectrum as their own.

There's not just one but two flies in this particular ointment. Firstly, who's going to pay for the spectrum and how much would they be willing to pay?

The payment issue would certainly go against the traditional TV players because it would be madness in the UK to allocate spectrum to the BBC for free when the government could get a tidy sum selling it to Vodafone, for example.

The second snag is that the regulators – certainly the UK's Ofcom, are moving towards a technology agnostic approach to spectrum. What that means is that if you pay for a licence, then you can run whatever you like over it.

That kind of makes it impossible to allocate 75 per cent to 'TV' and 25 per cent to mobile broadband. What would happen, for example, if Qualcomm got a licence and was classified as part of the mobile bit when it used the facility to run its Mediaflo mobile TV service?

The most interesting point highlighted by the report is that so far only three countries in the EU have adopted an official policy towards the 'digital dividend'.

In the UK, the government can afford to lag behind because London doesn't lose its analogue TV until 2012. µ

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