back to article Lords call for the end of TV transmissions

The UK House of Lords has recommended ending broadcast television and re-allocating for mobile data usage the spectrum currently used to transmit digital TV signals. Rather than take up vital electromagnetic spectrum, TV should be delivered exclusively over the internet, the House of Lords' Communications Committee concluded …

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      1. Wize

        Re: OK...

        "Re New Builds, why the hell do they not have Cat5 cable, or at least conduits, between rooms? "

        Because, by the time it becomes standard to install Cat5, we will want fibre between rooms or be wireless.

        1. Tim Walker
          Meh

          Re: OK...

          What I wouldn't give to have ANY kind of Gigabit Ethernet-capable cabling between the rooms of our house already... and I don't greatly care whether it's Cat5e, Cat6, fibre or magic elf-ropes

          It would save some serious DIY work installing it (and/or serious cash, if I bottle out and call in an electrician to do it), and I wouldn't have to use slow 200Mbps (ha ha ha, oh stop it, you're killing me) HomePlugAV adapters which no doubt honk off the local radio-hams.

          Ah, 21st-century worries...

        2. JEDIDIAH
          Linux

          Re: OK...

          > "Re New Builds, why the hell do they not have Cat5 cable, or at least conduits, between rooms? "

          > Because, by the time it becomes standard to install Cat5, we will want fibre between rooms or be wireless.

          The cable bundle I put into my walls 6 years ago already has fiber. The marginal cost of doing this was trivial at the time. Alternatively, I could have just run conduit.

          Specifying conduit in the building code would make a great deal of sense. It would be a bit more expensive but it would be very future proof.

          Either way, I'm not seeing wired Gigabit becoming obsolete any time soon. I can to file transfers at 100MB/s from one corner of my house to the other and I don't see any consumer tech matching that any time soon.

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Multicast is of the essence

    My first thought was the same as petur's. Multicast is one of those options thoughtfully built in to the Internet protocols by the nice folks at the IETF, and then neglected by the stupid money-grubbing people who actually provide Internet connectivity. (Yes, BT, I do mean you).

    The Lords are right in principle, but unfortunately you can be right in principle and come to grief spectacularly because someone didn't work out the implementation properly. The Internet as we know it in the UK today is emphatically NOT appropriate as a medium for everyone to start watching TV. It's barely adequate for traditional browsing, email, and file transfer. If you want a perfect example, consider the coverage of the London Olympics right now. The BBC told us for years that they would cover everything at the Games. Then, a day or two before, they casually mentioned that you could only get their 30 parallel streams if you subscribe to Sky or Virgin or Freesat. So off to the BBC Web site to see what's available there. Yes, it's a 500Kbps grainy feed that stops every 30 seconds for about 30 seconds. Overloaded, do you think? Even the official Olympic Web site's "live scores" tend to be minutes or more behind. Pathetic.

    So get your priorities right, government, better still, hire a competent project manager - although I know it goes against the grain to be organized and have plans you stick to for more than ten days. First, give us ALL broadband like that in Japan or South Korea - 1Gbps up and down, delivered by fibre to the premises. And back it up with properly specified backbones and routing centres. Then you can come back and talk about using it for TV.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Multicast is of the essence @Tom Welsh

      I think you'll find that Korea claims 100% by virtue of high speed wireless broadband coverage in rural areas, not fibre, and for the OECD broadband stats having only high speed smartphone access still counts as broadband. Whether having to watch all fifty TV channels simultaneously on a 4 inch screen works for them I can't say.

  2. Alan Potter 1
    Thumb Up

    Impressive

    If nothing else, their Lordships are trying to bring a serious debate about how we use the resources available to us - much better-informed contributions than we have seen from the Commons. Abolish the House Of Lords? Maybe it's "the other place" that we should be dismissing!

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Impressive

      I for one welcome our sleepy ermine-clad overlords!

      But seriously, I'm all for democracy and all- but the downside of the House of Commons is that there is no motivation for them to think much beyond a 4 to 8 year electoral cycle. Many issues, especially those concerning infrastructure, take place over a much longer time period, ideally benefiting voters who are not yet born.

      1. Imsimil Berati-Lahn
        Coffee/keyboard

        Re: Impressive

        @Dave126:

        New keyboard please. Tea and half-chewed snickers bar on this one now.

        "sleepy ermine-clad overlords" PMSL.

  3. Number6

    What about audio?

    I'd like to see them offer audio feeds too, for those of us who want to listen but don't need to waste bandwidth on video. Also useful at work where it's possible to wear headphones to listen while working, and not take a big bite out of the company internet bandwidth when doing so.

  4. lewton

    Electricity Bill?

    I would be interested to know how the power consumption compares between broadcast and internet; for example a TV transmitter might consume a few MW but serve maybe 100000 homes and with no additional costs as # users increase. A broadband pipe to each home could end up consuming considerably more power and will scale by user numbers. Comments?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lack Of Understanding

    This shows such an incredible lack of understanding of how the current UK internet backbone is not geared to deliver this and would be brought to its knees without huge investment.

    No wonder science is so fucked up in this country as the idiots who make decisions all have history of art degrees.

    1. skipper
      Go

      Re: Lack Of Understanding

      But they're not talking about doing it now. We all know that it wouldn't work today, even if the core backbone was fine, many households don't have broadband, or don't have decent enough broadband.

      That said, if they used multicast (as to not do so would be lunacy), then the main stumbling block would the required end-point upgrades. Selling off the spectrum to the mobile companies etc could create a huge pot of money with which to fund these with.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Lack Of Understanding

        And what about congestion at the exchange (ADSL) ?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Stop

        Re: Lack Of Understanding @skipper

        "Selling off the spectrum to the mobile companies etc could create a huge pot of money with which to fund these with."

        No it wouldn't. Last time round they were fleeced over 3G, which they all felt compelled to bid for, raised about £20 billion that the government wasted on Lord-knows-what, and resulted in the significant value destruction for shareholders - in large part your and my pension pots. And even if it hadn't gone sour, the telcos would have needed to have raised that £20 billion plus economic return from your and my pocket as customers.

        If anything, the uk 3G auctions made it less likely that we'd see fast roll out of broadband, because it was cash sucked out of the industry. You think they'd get it right this time?

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecoms_crash

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Lack Of Understanding @skipper

          'They' did get it spectacularly right by maximising the return from the auction. That's how auctions are supposed to work. It's not the goverment's fault if companies don't understand their OWN business.

  6. SJRulez

    Bandwidth Caps

    So are they also going to address bandwidth caps or am I going to be watching them wasting time booing and cheering like a bunch of school kids on the parliament channel and get cut off before hearing the decision!

  7. dotdavid
    Thumb Up

    What YouView should have been?

    Not sure whether it'll ever work in the medium term as a *replacement* for broadcast TV, but I think all the Freeview/Freesat channels should be strongly encouraged to provide an IPTV service. TVCatchup.com is all very well but an official standards-based IPTV, that you could buy a standard box for that plugged into your broadband, would be absolutely brilliant.

  8. Quentin North

    Who pays?

    Setting aside the technical and capacity issues possibly arising from using what is, essentially, a point to point communications channel for broadcast purposes, the key issue with this for me is who pays for delivery?

    In TV over the air broadcast, setting aside the UK licence fee as a contributor to cost, the broadcaster pays for delivery through contracting transmission services. In the current model of either cable TV or internet provision the customer pays for delivery through cable on ISP fees. It would seem to me that such a shift to wired provision only would end up transferring the cost of delivery to customers and away from producers. This seems like a bad idea to me as a consumer of TV, and an especially bad idea for people with low incomes, such as pensioners, who currently get TV delivery free of any charge. Even if there was a universal service requirement this would not be without a significant cost per home which must be met somewhere whilst with over the air delivery it is negligible.

  9. Isendel Steel
    Alert

    Sounds fine in principle....

    However, there would also need to be some investment at the receiver end - those who don't want or need broadband for example (it would now become a necessary evil and additional cost to those on limited income).

    Would meet the government view of every service to be web based - the smart TV sellers must be applauding this and rubbing their hands together (and yes I know it's just a recommendation).

  10. schotness

    License fee

    So if you only wanted to continue to watch tv & not get internet, does that mean that your license fee will cover your adsl & mandatory line rental charges?

  11. Gomez Adams

    Crazy idea. DTT is a much more efficient use of limited resources for one to many broadcasting than is the internet for the larger values of many we are talking about here.

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: efficient use of limited resources

      But the limited resource here is the broadcast airwaves and the proposed solution doesn't necessarily use any of that. (In practice, end-points might use domestic wireless networks for the final few yards, but they needn't and it would be an affordable use of spectrum anyway because it is cellular.) You are trading efficient use of a scarce resource for a less efficient use of one that is orders of magnitude more plentiful.

  12. DrXym

    Fine in principle

    If the Lords want to make terrestrial TV go away then the first thing they will have to consider is how to decouple broadband from the service that sits on top.

    Broadband should be considered a utility like gas or water. The cable running to the door should not be tied to one provider. I should be able to switch providers if I wish, or choose none at all and still have access to TV, or mix and match my TV provider with my internet and phone provider. All over the same fibre.

    There needs to be a standard such that I can plug an ethernet cable from my TV to a box in the wall, it discovers what TV providers and services (live, on demand, timeshift) are available, I can pick one and it all just works.

    Once they legislate all this including something analogous for 3G/4G and ensure every household is adequately covered THEN they can start reducing the broadcast spectrum.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fine in principle

      Maybe I just saw the future. A "national grid" ethernet network. A massive all-encompassing switched terabit ethernet running to every house in the country. Plug in a telly, it will connect to a built-in list of things: tv://bbc.co.uk etc. Plug in a phone, perhaps dial a friend using their IP6 address? phone://...... (from your contacts obviously, you' wouldn't be tryping an IP6 from memory :D)

      1. Vic

        Re: Fine in principle

        > A "national grid" ethernet network.

        An interwoven network of networks. Wow. You could call it something really slappy, like - oh, I don't know, an internet, or something like that?

        > dial a friend using their IP6 address? phone://......

        If you used "sip:friend@example.com", you'd be standards-compliant...

        Vic.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Freesat

    Keep the spectrum for 4G and successors. However, why force people to have high bandwidth broadband (i.e. more than 2 Mbit/s) ? Even though I have 60 Mbit/s broadband, I'm more than happy with Freesat and the 20+ HD Olympics channels to view... My mother (70+) is happy with low cost broadband for looking up recopies and looking at the odd interesting YouTube video; many people won't want to pay for this.

  14. Anonymous John

    You seem to have missed the word "terrestrial".

    "In a report entitled Broadband for All - An Alternative Vision, the Committee writes: "We recommend that the government, Ofcom and the industry begin to consider the desirability of the transfer of terrestrial broadcast content from spectrum to the internet and the consequent switching off of broadcast transmission over spectrum." "

    There is a little known alternative called satellite TV.

    1. Hilibnist
      Meh

      Re: You seem to have missed the word "terrestrial".

      I think "terrestrial" is in there. As in "...the transfer of terrestrial broadcast content from spectrum to the internet..." There's no reason why satellite systems couldn't share the load though.

      Thing is, they want to free up this "spectrum" thing by killing TV transmissions so they can make more money by selling it to 4G, 5G(?) and whatever else. Doesn't it seem a bit odd that one of the main benefits of this brave new wireless world is that you can send and receive more mobile data... thereby providing bandwidth to allow all the happy new users to receive a TV signal anywhere? Unlike the current broadcast system which allows you to receive a TV signal anywhere.

      1. Anonymous John

        Re: You seem to have missed the word "terrestrial".

        That was my point. El Reg's interpretation of what the Lords said differs from mine.

        "Rather than take up vital electromagnetic spectrum, TV should be delivered exclusively over the internet, the House of Lords' Communications Committee concluded."

        Nothing exclusive about it. Having Freeview and Sky/Freesat doesn't really make sense to me.

  15. Magister
    Pint

    Sort of agree

    I think that as a strategic vision, it does make sense; and as far as I can see, it is actually meant to be a strategic view, not something that they expect to happen anytime soon.

    It appears that they do realise that the infrastructure is not in place and the reason for the recommendation is to try to see if they can then start a discussion on how to achieve that improvement in the infrastructure.

    Now if they could find a way to translate that vision into reality, I would be very impressed. I might even buy them a pint

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    It all seems wrong

    If national communications capability is so critical, why advocate going down a path which will consume a significant part of the fixed bandwidth for something which is really quite unimportant?

    Whatever, if they are serious about this then I would find it acceptable provided that the cost to me as a broadband user for the extra capacity (to serve at least four independent users in my home) was no more per annum than I am currently paying for the TV license. If they can guarantee that, and that there would still be capacity for current broadband activities, then maybe I'd accept it.

    Otherwise, My Lords, please concentrate on more important matters, like keeping an eye on the House of Commons.

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: It all seems wrong

      "If national communications capability is so critical, why advocate going down a path which will consume a significant part of the fixed bandwidth for something which is really quite unimportant?"

      Exactly. Reserving the best part of the spectrum for broadcast telly is just dumb.

  17. Bluenose

    One subject multiple stories

    Having started to read up on this committee and its findings yesterday I probably have a better view than those who have simply read this particular one.

    The Committee has actually said that the current strategy of having the world's fastest broadband does not achieve what is needed for the UK see this story first

    (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/31/lords_communications_committee_broadband_report/)

    As for their current proposal, they are right that using the internet to deliver content is the way forward, ultimately all content (phone calls, video calls, radio and television) will be delivered by this medium. Whether we use a fixed line connection or have wireless connectivity wherever we go is really a matter of choice, the actual medium for delivery will be the given. Freeing up radio spectrum improves the chances of providing high speed internet access to all since it removes a major barrier to achieving it today (lack of spectrum at the right wave lengths). If Arquiva (today's broadcast TV monopolist) had any sense they would already be undertaking the necessary work to allow for their tv towers to be used to provide a high speed wireless broadband backbone network that can be used to support the 4G networks of next year.

    As for issues of tv licenses, new models are needed to ensure that people pay for content. If we don't start to think about that now, then like the internet radio stations, tv companies will potentially price the product out of the broadcasters ability to pay (internet radio pays on a per stream basis with each individual user equal to 1 stream). The people who produce the content deserve a real return on their efforts in the same way as people who work in other industries.

    I think that this Committee has done something that the last two Governments have failed to do, they have identified a clear vision of the digital future, they have proposed some but not all the actions that may need to be taken to get their and like Paddy Boyle they are attempting to make sure that everyone gets included and not just those who live in the brand new house with a piece of glass fibre linking it to the fibre equipped exchange next door.

    As for me I am off to look at business opportunities that will make me rich whilst I live in my little village that as a result of this report may yet get a decent broadband speed which does not vary by up to 60% depending on the time of day.

  18. Mage Silver badge

    Crass Stupidity

    Internet and Wireless Broadcast are complementary. It's fantasy to think you can replace Broadcast media with Internet. Unless every lamp post is a WiFi Point or LTE base.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's all an evil ploy... when they want to ban the Internet they can take out the TV too. Those evil Lords, whatever will they think of next! </sarcasm> Though, if we did all the TV on the Interwibble we'd basically DDOS ourselves off it anyway. Would need quite a bit of investment I'd hazard.

  20. Trollslayer
    Thumb Down

    Who will pay?

    This will need not only broadband to all households but with enough speed and, as others have mentioned, multicast suppport.

    Billions.

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Who will pay?

      But "billions" amortised over 15-20 years and coming with associated benefits (like, say, that fast internet connection that almost anybody claims to want and be willing to pay for if only the service was available in their area) might end up being substantially less than the cost of the tellys that people plug the cable into.

      Look at it this way: Does anyone here think we *won't* have a network capable of delivering several megabits to any property that wants it by 2030? That's 18 years. Think how far we've come since 1994.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    pay more tv service

    cant be bothered to read the utter rubbish supporting this dumb idea. At the moment you grab your tv off the airwaves. difficult for them to regulate individuals. Once its over the net they can pull the plug or meter it out at extortionate prices. British public are dumb and will probably sleepwalk into this one.

    1. Chad H.

      Re: pay more tv service

      They can't pull the plug on transmitters now? When did this happen?

  22. JaitcH
    FAIL

    ill this mean that Free-To-Air ...

    become Free-To-Cable?

    The theory is good but there will be numerous problems in reaching remote communities.

    Then there's the Designed by Committee factor which make it a non-starter.

  23. This post has been deleted by its author

  24. heyrick Silver badge

    Scary.

    It is scary that the idea is to push terrestrial television onto broadband in order to free up more space for mobiles (no doubt sold to the highest bidder), given that we're either going to see a lot of viewers cut off due to slow internet, or a dramatic reduction in picture quality. Not to mention, is the infrastructure even capable of supporting this much data transfer - we could be looking at 2-4 channels simultaneously (parents, kids, recording...).

    It seems highly bizarre that the Lords did not consider making more use of satellite services (as has been pointed out) given that it exists, is capable of reaching most viewers with no massive infrastructure changes, and accordingly offers higher quality pictures than squeezing down a congested pipe.

    Then we get to the mobile devices themselves. The Lords are aware, I hope, that other EU countries use similar frequencies for their own terrestrial broadcasting?

  25. Andy The Hat Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    ... and my prediction rears it's head

    Some years ago I foresaw the government trying to push tv delivery onto the internet - the only justification for 'high speed broad band' in the majority of cases is for streamed media delivery. Currently time shifted material is not subject to license fees, the broadcasters pay for the delivery and as many people in a household can watch when they like, timeshifting as appropriate.

    Roll onto broadband del ...*buffering* ... ivery where the customer with be forced into paying for huge bandwidths of technically poor quality material, the customer will pay for the transmission infrastructure, the broadcaster will be able to implement pay-as-you-watch whenever they feel like it (or the license fee will extend to broadband connections and internet enabled devices), timeshifting of material can be blocked or restricted using DRM, restricted viewing per ip can be implemented so no more 'three tv sets per household', and if you have more than on connected dev ... *buffering* ... ice either quality will be awful or the inevi ...*buffering*... table will happen.

    It's just the Lords pandering to the government saving loads of money and at the same time getting loads back in spectrum fees ... ie taxing the individual.

    As a fag packet calculation, exactly what bandwidth connection would I need to service my three HD boxes, two HD tv's and three computers simultaneously? Perhaps 20Mbps is the absolute limit per channel, that's six channels plus 5Mbps for the computers *plus* any bandwidth used for time shift recording. For an average houshold a conservative minimum of 100Mbps and for comfort 150Mbps. I can barely get 4mbps now ... what's going to change? Where is BT going to find even 20Mbps of guaranteed raw backbone capacity to every household in Britain (they probably can't multiplex this type of data stream much but assume that's the minimum requirement per household)?

    Mr Bolt is on the starting line, 30 million devices are tuned in at 20mbps ... I think the phrase 'talking out of their ars ...*buffering* ...

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And in an emergency?

    And when an emergency happens, which is easier to keep running:

    a single transmitter, plus a number of battery operated receivers

    or

    a bunch of routers, head-end units, distribution units, and home routers, many of which won't be on any form of back up?

    But I am worrying about nothing - it's not like there are power outages that take down hundreds of millions of people's power....

    (I wonder why my contractor house hasn't been responding to my emails.... I'll have to ping Bhupesh about this poor performance.)

    1. Chad H.

      Re: And in an emergency?

      In an emergency one could instead send SMSes or "All user phone calls" to all mobile devices on all networks I guess. Probably more effective than counting on people to turn on the TV.

  27. Neil Alexander
    Paris Hilton

    Frankly the responses in this thread amaze me

    ... considering this is supposed to be a tech website frequented by tech-savvy users and commenters.

    The UK has seen a steady rise in broadband availability in rural areas for years now, and they aren't going to turn off terrestrial tomorrow. Like the article says, if it ever came near the drawing board, a required availability would be determined for the entire nation, and by that time we're likely to have broadband in more places at higher speeds regardless.

    Paris, because even she can read.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Frankly the responses in this thread amaze me

      Maybe I am too cynical but I suspect that the content of this report is driven by lobbying by organisations that want more mobile bandwidth to sell rather than by a technical vision to deliver better or more flexible television services to the general population. As such I'm not sure that judging responses based on technical merit has much value.

      As someone who lives in a small village albiet one that has an exchange with 100 yards of my house the idea of watching streaming video on the Internet that isn't endlessly pausing while buffers are filled is a distant dream

  28. Chad H.

    Solution seems clear

    A national (wholesale) fibre broaband network, funded by selling the spectrum

  29. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    And how will we use, why do we want, the "more, faster mobile data services"?

    We will be using our new data services to watch television.

    Which we can do -now-.

    OfWhatever, please don't consider this for very long, it isn't worth it.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Reliability?

    I don't recall a single time that I've noticed the terrestrial TV signal being offline. However, I can recall multiple occasions in the past year when broadband has had outages - some minor, some longer - some local issues, some widescale issues.

    Going to broadband for TV sounds like a major step back for reliability of the service.

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