Analogue switch off will boost mobile Internet

MAYBE THE MAYANS foresaw it but after 2012 mobile broadband Internet in the UK could get a boost if frequencies currently used by analogue telly channels are reallocated to the web.

Mobile broadband could be the beneficiary of changes to telly signals according to speakers at the Westminster Eforum seminar on the future of digital terrestrial television. The analogue signals used for the past 80 years are being phased out through what is known as a "switchover" and the London region will be the last part of the UK to see the old transmissions switched off in 2012. The switchover replaces analogue with digital signals.

The use of digital signals for television broadcast means that a swathe of radio spectrum will become available for other uses. "Some...frequencies will be reallocated to mobile broadband, there could be some interference with [Freeview] services," said Rob Hamlin, Arqiva strategic development director for terrestrial broadcast. Arqiva provides broadcasting infrastructure including wireless communications.

However the process of deciding what newly available frequencies are allocated to what uses could become quite a bun fight as both HD and 3D telly supporters could be lobbying for the same chunks of bandwidth. That prospect of interference with existing digital TV channels might count against their allocation to mobile broadband. µ