I'd like to point out that there is no "Digital Dividend" for the public - merely the unnecessary cost and trouble having to switch over from what for many people is the perfectly adequate analogue system to the more expensive, complicated and unnecessary "Digital" system.

Any "Digital Dividend" will be in the form of license money paid to the Goverment and hardware manufacturers selling STB's and Digital TV's.

The last time a chunk of the RF spectrum was auctioned off, it was to the mobile phone companies.

These sweet little organisations decideed that they could make a huge profit from the available space and duly bid a fortune for their chunks.

Strangely, it is now us, poor folk, who are having to stump up to pay for this expression of corprorate greed, in the form of our mobile phone contracts. (how much DOES it actually cost the networks for one to have a mobile conversation?)

Well, we now have another chunk of the RF spectrum up fo rgrabs.

I'd be willing to bet there's a similar view that the profit potential is huge, so the price realised will be commmensurately high.

Hopefully this time, it will be the TV to mobile services, Brussels, and the rest who win with services that, ultimately, people simply won't want, leaving a large amount of egg on the faces of those who've bid for it.

So people don't want to watch crap TV on a two inch screen? Who'd'a thunk it!

Does the EU want from "owning" spectrum?

Voice of Europe will shortly be broadcasting into your home, as described by Orwell.

off back to SA i go then....

As I read it, they are aiming for broadly similar frequency allocations across Europe, rather than having everything randomly scatterblasted across whatever pockets of frequencies manufacturers can buy up.

It makes sense to me that most of EU has a band for DECT and a band for cordless speakers etc -- not because I want to transmit from England to France (the range is less than 200 metres) but because I know that equipment from any EU country will work here too. Economies of scale, etc bringing cheaper prices.

Equally, its not obvious that the highest bidder for a piece of bandwidth is necessarily the one that's going to most benefit the public. Completely the opposite, in fact. The successful bidder should be the one that promises to provide the BEST service at an ECONOMICAL cost. Ten to one, the company that's willing to bid over the top for the bandwidth is going to provide one of the most expensive services.