The BBC in the UK has added its voice to most of the UK broadcasters in calling for regulator Ofcom to set aside some of the spectrum freed up in the digital switchover of TV programming for High Definition terrestrial digital TV, regardless of who offers the highest price.
So far Ofcom has said that it will sell the spectrum reaped from forcing TV into smaller digital broadcasting channels to the highest bidder and not dictate what technology is used with the spectrum. In other words it will leave it to market forces.
It is quite true what Mark Thompson, the BBC’s Director-General, says, which is that without getting extra spectrum to support HD, presumably using the existing DVB-T technology that is used for the UK’s Freeview service, the BBC would forever be at a disadvantage that would probably kill off its ability to offer top quality programming.
Thompson said, ‘It’s a technological advance that we think can and should be available as far as possible to all viewers of digital television ‘ whether they watch through cable, satellite or an aerial, and whether they choose pay or free-to-air services.’
The BBC also disclosed findings from a set of independent consultants that it believes that the loss to the UK in private and social value, if public service broadcasters are not able to develop HD services on DTT spectrum, is likely to range from £4.1 billion to £15.6 billion.
This figure is arrived at by working out the cost of another six million homes which are not currently pay TV homes, paying for one or other existing service in order to get HD. Sounds a bit of a nonsense to us.
Without going into the obviously complex and potentially flawed logic of that claim, this decision is already being reverberated around Europe, where all the EU countries are on track to have a digital switchover at some date prior to or on 2012. Some countries are providing for new HD services automatically, others just don’t know and the UK is probably the only country planning to let market forces just do their thing.
The outcome from that it is inevitable, in that the highest bidders will come from the cellular operator community, and that the spectrum will be used to offer mobile web and mobile video and TV, potentially in direct competition with broadcasting services. That’s what market forces would want.
Most territories will free up 100s of MHz of spectrum, enough to offer existing broadcasters a small HD outpost, and still auction the rest for a government windfall.
If there is not enough spectrum made available to existing terrestrial broadcasters they will be inevitably disadvantaged against pay TV providers such as Satellite DTH, Cable operators and a new generation of IPTV operators. But in many countries that fight is already lost and the UK is one of the few exceptions which has more than a 40% (approaching 50%) penetration of terrestrial digital TV services, through Freeview.
The BBC has called for a third of freed up spectrum to be allocated to Public Service Broadcasters which it says will allow it enough spectrum to offer 3 HD channels country wide. Our understanding is that this would in reality require a fraction of that spectrum, even if it stuck steadfastly to the outdated MPEG2 that is used on Freeview instead of biting the bullet and leaping into MPEG4/H.264 compression, which is far more efficient.
In fact taking the existing spectrum used for Freeview and moving all of them over to H.264 by replacing all of the DVB-T set tops in the market, would be a hugely complex task given that more than 10 million UK homes have gone out and bought an MPEG2 DVB-T converter box.
However if Freeview was to ‘borrow’ some spectrum for a few years to introduce this, simulcasting existing services in both formats while it shipped new set tops, then it could retreat back into its existing spectrum at a later date and still fit all of its SD services and still have room for a further 8 or 9 HD channels.
We think that’s a far more sensible approach and it would give the UK two bites at the cherry, auctioning off much of the spectrum initially and then auctioning the second slice four or five years later when TV broadcasters gave back their temporary slice.