GSMA big cheese Anne Bouverot this week urged the European Commission not to hang about with coordinating the release of 700-MHz spectrum.
The director general of the industry group has also called for Brussels to bring forward its review of sub-700-MHz spectrum and to support its call for the ITU to allocate the UHF band for both broadcast and mobile use at November’s WRC-15. At present the sub-700 MHz band is not harmonised for mobile use.
With co-primary allocation, "national governments will retain the option of reallocating more spectrum to mobile if required," said Bouverot on Thursday.
"This flexible solution will protect consumer interests by empowering people in Europe to choose how they want to access content," she continued. "It also supplies long-term guarantees for the future of digital terrestrial TV in European countries that rely on terrestrial broadcast services, ensuring a robust future for both industries."
Bouverot’s comments were made following Wednesday’s publication of the Lamy Report, the European Commission’s public consultation on the UHF band.
Out of 96 organisations that responded to the consultation, 61 supported the idea of an EU-coordinated approach to clearing the 700 MHz band – also known as the second digital dividend – to make way for mobile broadband use.
"The respondents argue that EU coordination reduces fragmentation on the internal market and contributes to the harmonisation of the network coverage obligations and establishment of the common standards for receivers," the EU said.
The EU is keen to avoid a repeat of the slow and, in some cases, still incomplete release of the first digital dividend – the 800 MHz band – and has therefore proposed coordinating the release of 700-MHz frequencies under its Digital Single Market (DSM) plan.
The Lamy Report suggested clearing the 700 MHz band by 2020, give or take a couple of years, a timeline that found favour with "a vast majority" of respondents.
Bouverot is slightly less patient though, and has called on the EU to support member states’ requests to release the spectrum between 2018 and 2020, or even earlier for countries in a position to release it sooner.
Indeed, Europe’s first 700-MHz auction has been underway in Germany since late May, and while the process has not yet ended, the picture so far is somewhat underwhelming.
Germany is selling off frequencies in four bands: 1800 MHz, 900 MHz the aforementioned 700 MHz, and 1500 MHz.
While overall the auction has raked in an impressive €3 billion and counting, the 700-MHz spectrum – the first globally-harmonised LTE band; ideal for rural coverage; that will unite the world in a borderless utopia filled with readily-accessible Internet memes – accounts for just €450 million.
The lion’s share of the cash has so far been splurged on the 1800-MHz and 900-MHz spectrum. Incumbent Deutsche Telekom leads the way so far, with b ids spread across all four frequency bands that came to €1.22 billion, as of Wednesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, broadcasters have started to get nervous in the last year or so, concerned that their requirements will be overlooked when it comes to securing airwaves.
"There is no benefit to be achieved from an arbitrage between the quality of wireless broadband services and the quality of TV services," said Broadcast Networks Europe (BNE), in a submission to the Lamy Report in April.
The lobby group said the Lamy Report’s job is to "establish a win-win proposal for Europe, not one where the improvement of quality of some services would be traded against the degradation of other services."
According to the European Commission, the Lamy Report found that representatives from the creative industries are nonetheless keen to put the EU in charge in the hope that it will ensure that digital terrestrial TV (DTT) services find a safe home in frequencies below 700 MHz.
Again, Bouverot has other ideas.
She called on the EU to accelerate plans to review the sub-700 MHz band for the purposes of potentially refarming it for mobile broadband.
"Allowing for flexible use of the UHF band will also mean the EC will be one step closer to achieving its Digital Agenda objectives of providing high-quality mobile broadband to European citizens," she said.
This has the potential to set the mobile industry on course for a clash of probably-not-biblical proportions with the broadcast industry.
"It is important to challenge the notion that wireless broadband is an alternative to terrestrial broadcast delivery of content when on the contrary terrestrial broadcasting remains a robust means of audio-visual content delivery," is the BNE’s position. "The two technologies are complimentary and utilised by the consumer on that basis."
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