Clearing the skies: European spectrum policy and future challenges of DTT in Finland and Spain

Abstract

Digital terrestrial television (DTT) in Europe is facing a serious challenge as it will lose about 30 per cent of its current spectrum resources for mobile services by 2020. European countries originally agreed to release only the 800 MHz band from TV to mobile as the digital dividend. However, over European opposition, the release of the 700 MHz band as the second digital dividend was accepted at the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) in 2012 and confirmed in 2015. This article analyses the development of broadcasting and spectrum policies in two DTT pioneer countries to understand their different capacities in adapting to this change in European spectrum policy. Whereas Finland was the first country to decide on rapid release of the second digital dividend, Spain was still struggling to clear the first one. We argue that any geographic and demographic differences explain only a part of the contrast, which is based on divergent national broadcast and spectrum policy contexts.

When efficiency meets clientelism: Spectrum management policy and broadcasting model – The Spanish case

“…Several previous studies by authors on the subject of both radio (Arboledas and Bonet, 2013, 2014; Bonet, 2007, 2012; Bonet and Arboledas, 2011; Bonet et al, 2009) and television (Bonet et al, 2014; Guimerà, 2006, 2014; Guimerà and Blasco, 2012; Guimerà and Bonet, 2012) and the liberalization of radio spectrum, digital dividend or the switch-off (Bonet et al, 2008) offer suggestions of unprofessional and highly politically motivated management both in terms of radio and television. Studies by other authors (Ala-Fossi and Bonet, 2015; Cullell, 2011; Delgado, 2015; Fernández-Quijada and Arboledas, 2013; García Leiva, 2009, 2013; García Leiva and Starks, 2009; Massaro, 2013; Schumann, 2011) indicate the same kind of tendency regarding the future of broadcasting and the key role radio spectrum is playing.…”

“…Radio and television were no longer the one and only user in some spectrum bands. In short, this is an economic battle between two ways of understanding mass communication and its business model, and the radio spectrum is the battlefield (Ala-Fossi and Bonet, 2015; Bonet et al, 2008; European Commission, 2005, 2007; GRETEL, 2004; Hellman, 2010; Mullooly, 2012).…”

Follow the Data! A Strategy for Tracing Infrastructural Power

“…The competition between fixed and mobile networks constitutes one of the clearest examples of infrastructural power at the access network layer and, unlike what we will see in the next infrastructural layers, it is largely politically determined. Since the electromagnetic spectrum used for mobile networks is a scarce resource, it is allocated and assigned by state authorities, meaning that questions about whether or not to release spectrum for mobile communication and how to price and assign frequencies are highly political matters (Ala-Fossi & Bonet, 2018;Martínez-Santos et al, 2021). By holding back the allocation of frequencies or selling them off at high prices, governments can-deliberately or notdelay the spread of mobile broadband and thereby create an advantage for fixed broadband providers.…”

Real-Time Generation of Standard-Compliant DVB-T Signals

“…In the upcoming future, some TV channels located in the upper UHF band will be switched off, since that spectrum will be reallocated to cellular networks for extending their 4G (or upcoming 5G) services [31], [32]. This spectrum reallocation pushes the broadcasting players (operators and equipment companies) to move their technologies towards SDR-based ones.…”