back to article Ofcom snatches 700MHz off digital telly, hands it to mobile data providers

Ofcom is planning to nick some of the airwaves currently used by digital terrestrial telly and hand them over for the nation's mobile broadband use. The regulator said today that it would make the 700MHz spectrum available for mobile data to make services faster and cheaper, although the changes won’t come into effect until …

  1. TheWeddingPhotographer

    Twisted and skewed

    And more content will be on Sky via cable... Go figure..

    It's a good job the peeps in London get a decent phone signal and cable then.. now for the rest of us with country broadband and no signal, there is Freeview.

    What's more, most ariel filters that have currently been fitted and are being sold right now, reject anything over 800mhz. So essentially we will all need new filters too!

    1. tmTM

      Re: Twisted and skewed

      Something exists outside of the M25???

      Someone should tell the folks in charge, they probably don't have a clue.

      1. Trigonoceps occipitalis
        Meh

        Re: Twisted and skewed

        OWLOM

        Only Within London Orbital Motorway

    2. Wilseus

      Re: Twisted and skewed

      What's more, most ariel filters that have currently been fitted and are being sold right now, reject anything over 800mhz. So essentially we will all need new filters too!

      Most *aerials*, even many wideband types, reject everything much above 800 MHz, never mind any filters you may have fitted.

  2. Michael Habel

    Sounds good to me. If this helps push IPTV along.

  3. Dogsauce

    Can't see any problem with this, let's face it, we could do away with at least 50% of the available digital TV channels without any loss. ITV is a waste of bandwidth.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I didn't realise ITV was even still going. Haven't watched ITV for a decade I reckon.

      1. Adolph Clickbait

        What? No X-faaaaactaaaaaa ?

    2. Immenseness
      Devil

      I can

      "we could do away with at least 50% of the available digital TV channels without any loss"

      I agree, except they won't. Don't you know consumers want choice (tm)? They will reduce the bandwidth available to each channel instead and anything remotely watchable at the moment will be youtube quality again. It is called progress. Sigh!

  4. MJI Silver badge

    Those transmitters

    Put out some serious power. I was having a look to see if Sutton would be affected.

  5. Mage Silver badge

    Future?

    What about proper HD 1920 x 1080 on all channels rather than 544 x 576 and 1440 x 1080?

    What about if real 3D is invented rather than fake Sterescopic?

    What about Portable or Transportable TV?

    IPTV only works for more than about 1% of viewers if it's Broadcast anyway... It's complementary to DTT, never a replacement. Mobile Phone IPTV is a complete non-starter unless it's Broadcast in disguise (which would likely be paytv only).

    This is a stupid money grab by regulator. Also will not have decent mast density and coverage. Smaller cells (= More capacity) with x5 as many masts for 900MHz and above is a FAR better Mobile Solution.

    Development of TV crippled.

    The "Digital Dividend"? = Money for Regulator and lower costs for Mobile Operators with no significant increase in Rural coverage or performance. Nothing else for public.

    What if TV channels started producing decent content?

    Mobile is getting priority purely due to "captured" Regulator and periodic Licence fee cash boosts to Treasury (which comes from Mobile customers).

    There should be a single Wholesale infrastructure with free licence and money to Treasury from the VAT etc of the Services.

    1. The Nazz

      Re: Future?

      Real 3D has been invented, it's called going outside and getting a life :-)

      1. 142

        Re: ...called going outside and getting a life

        Instead of commenting on online articles?

    2. Nextweek

      Re: Future?

      @Mage

      I recently had this discussion with my brother, DTT is a great thing, it saved having to wire up every home. However broadcast is built into the IP protocol, just not switched on. The most efficient use of our airwaves is not DTT (although DTT is a very efficient system).

      99% of people are using a static location to watch TV. We should be setting a mandate that by 2050 every home has fixed Internet line with speeds enough to carry TV, that the IP protocol enables the multicast feature and mobile broadband handles IPTV.

  6. Wyrdness

    The main reason that TV uses this spectrum is historical. TV's tend to be large, heavy and fixed in one place. So it would make sense for their content to be provided by cable, satellite or internet, and use the broadcast spectrum for mobile devices.

    Of course, in practice this will be difficult to achieve, but it may happen eventually.

    1. Gordon 11

      TV's tend to be large, heavy and fixed in one place. So it would make sense for their content to be provided by cable, satellite or internet, and use the broadcast spectrum for mobile devices.
      Whereas each individual set may be fixed in one place, there are many of them, and they are spread over a large area. That's why broadcasting to them is efficient - certainly more efficient than trying to use the Internet to provide the same coverage.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    STILL NO BUSH ON BABESTATION!!

    These unelected Quangos cause more damage to Britain than the Luftwaffe!

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Looks like DTV is going the way of DAB

    More and more channels no one wants to watch pushed into less and less available bandwidth but as soon as anyone dares suggest the image/sound quality isn't as good as the powers that be would like to pretend you get slapped with the "Well its digital , so its better". Well no, its not necessarily. Frankly I'd rather listen to FM than most DAB stations and a good quality analogue PAL signal gives a better image than a highly compressed DVB stream which might as well be broadcast from Legoland with the amount of block artifacts that occur as soon as theres any movement. HDTV isn't much better either.

    1. PNGuinn
      Thumb Up

      Re: Looks like DTV is going the way of DAB

      What you're really saying is the old ITV channels 6 to 13 on band 3 are doing nothing useful and are available for other uses.

      Its not a vast amount of bandwidth but might it have some use in "difficult" areas? Frequency reuse would have to be handled carefully - VHF can go a long way relatively.

      Anyway it'd remove the excuse to do away with FM on band 2. Bring it on I say.

  9. John Robson Silver badge

    PMSE shifting again?

    Bloody hell, not everyone wants to replace their hardware every time ofcom has another 'bright' idea...

    Some of us have to make this stuff last decades - the paltry "if you bought it in the last 3 years" payment doesn't really help people who male stuff last. The theatre I work with depreciate theae things over 5-10 years...

    1. Martin an gof Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: PMSE shifting again?

      Some of us have to make this stuff last decades - the paltry "if you bought it in the last 3 years" payment doesn't really help people who male stuff last.

      Likewise. In the grand scheme of some of the respondents to that consultation (I've just skimmed the document) we have a paltry 30-odd radio microphones, but after the last sell off a couple of years ago I had to buy eight new channels of Sennheiser and retune 16 or so older Trantecs (the old Sennheisers couldn't be retuned because they had "run out of parts"!). That cost an arm and a leg and there's no budget to do it again any time soon. We're expecting perhaps 15 year life from our kit so the thought of replacing or retuning it all again isn't fun.

      And there will be less spectrum available (and nobody will know where it is until the DTT frequency plan is sorted), so we might not be able to have a whole 24MHz as we do at present and Ofcom's suggestion that better RF design with low intermodulation transmitters or digital systems will help is just taking the mickey - for Pete's sake for a small concern like ours buying good quality FM systems is expensive enough. Good quality digital is extortionate.

      Aargh!

      M.

    2. Expectingtheworst

      Re: PMSE shifting again?

      For me as long as the 170+MHz range of VHF spectrum Trantecs are still usable I am OK, but I understand since the last shake-up, it would not be possible to do another Olympic games as there are not enough mic channels now available. Hope the small UHF free band is still going to be available and free !

      I must admit I am now watching 99.9% of the time on Sky (I Know!) As long as I switch off about once a week and let it do its thing I have had little problems. My old box is used with an old card for free to air channels.

      The bit rate for BBC HD transmissions has dropped quite a bit since they just had BBC HD.

      The BBC used to go for quality and innovation. Since they closed their research facility at Kingswood Warren, things have gone down-hill. Although the horrible DAB, I think was just meant for car use, was developed there. Pity they did not use the NICAM system which was in use for Television sound and is still used in the line for VHF FM.

      They now seem to be putting quality after everything else.

  10. Fihart

    Does this mean a new Freeview box (again !) ?

    Was annoyed when the last changes forced me to scrap a Pace box which worked faultlessly. Replaced it with a cheapo from Argos which blinks frequently if you set screen format to auto, occasionally freezes until switched off and on again -- always forgets to display subtitles after a few minutes (essential for some US shows).

    As another commenter has already said, they could easily dump at least 75% of the stuff on Freeview especially the infuriating shopping channels.

    Freesat (available via Sky dish and box without subscription) seems marginally more interesting as in addition to Freeview stuff it carries regional BBC, religious nutjob channels, some American entertainment channels and news from various foreign stations -- France (and sometimes Japan).

    To be frank, I'm close to dumping TV -- only turn it on briefly for a couple of days a week and then fume at the endless commercial breaks.

    1. MJI Silver badge

      Sodding Pace - now permanent shitlist members

      I had it out with them. I had a Pace Twin PVR, worked fine until DSO, hardware is 8k compliant but the software isn't. (I could watch but not record).

      I phoned them up. Managed to get through to an engineer.

      He basically admitted that they could fix it but did not want to spend the time nor money fixing it.

      Good news for Humax I feel, as they are the only PVR manufacturer I have used who have NOT let me down. I had a nice chat about their models recently and will be getting a HD Freeview PVR from them soon.

      So if anyone from Pace is reading, due to having to bin £450 of your crap, OK a DTVA and a Twin you are on my shitlist and I will NEVER buy anything of yours again.

      Humax are always helpfull, I had an early Sony IDTV and they were helpfull, 3 visits to get everything working perfectly including OnDigital. So please note now have Sony LCD panel and my Humax collection will get bigger.

      Anyway a 20GB USB dive is usefull and the 100GB I replaced it with is now in a home PC.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sodding Pace - now permanent shitlist members

        "Good news for Humax I feel, as they are the only PVR manufacturer I have used who have NOT let me down."

        Humax? Seriously?

        I bought a 9200T a few years back. Aside from the software constantly hanging for 10 secs for no reason or even crashing entirely and requiring a hard reset, the cheapo HD died just after the warranty expired taking all my recorded programs with it. And even if you can put up with that it'll randomly "forget" to record programs.

        Mind you , Humax are bad , but Sagemcom - now there's a whole other much deeper level of shite.

        1. MJI Silver badge

          Re: Sodding Pace - now permanent shitlist members

          Perhaps Humax are best of a bad bunch then?

          Pace though - they have burnt me too many times

        2. JimWin

          Re: Sodding Pace - now permanent shitlist members

          I had the same issue with my Humax - hard drive death. It was easy enough to replace, though you do need a streamable hard drive. The replacement has worked for much longer than the original (fingers crossed). And, yes, Humax - seriously!

    2. Fihart

      Re: Does this mean a new Freeview box (again !) ?

      To follow up, today saw on screen that the latest (?) changes to Freeview mean you lose Film 4+1 unless you have an HD Freeview box.

  11. Alan Denman

    and 99.9% of Sky channels could be done away with.1

    The good part(for shareholders) is that by getting rid of Freeview means Sky can more safely increase prices.

    1. MJI Silver badge

      Re: and 99.9% of Sky channels could be done away with.1

      No they would do the sensible thing.

      Freesat HD

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Already happening?

    Are they testing this already? In the last few weeks I have been losing the Sky channels on Freeview (Sky News, Pick, Dave etc) with interference ranging from bad pixellation to complete dropout. All the channels affected appear to be on 722 MHz, but occasionally 690 MHz channels are affected too. It seems to happen at various times of day, generally evening.

  13. Kay Burley ate my hamster

    Blimey, this wasn't written by Orlow? I spose it wasn't anti-BBC enough...

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