The (long) wait for new spectrum

At a GSMA-led press conference on the first day, operator and vendor CEOs joined forces to call on governments to allocate some of the lower frequency spectrum freed-up via the switchover to digital TV - the so-called Digital Dividend - for mobile use. The industry is asking for 100MHz of the 400MHz available and sees the new spectrum as vital for meeting the increasing capacity demands of next generation mobile technologies such as LTE. Some countries – those in Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, France and the UK, for example - are already sold on the idea, while the industry's argument that it can help lift economies out of recession will surely see many more follow suit. However, governments agreeing in principal to release the spectrum is only the start of what could be a long process. Many of the first movers are not expected to have fully freed-up the new spectrum until 2012, and many other countries could be several years after that. The recent delay in allocating the 700MHz spectrum in the US is a case in point. Despite auctioning off the new spectrum almost a year ago, the new US administration was forced recently to delay the switch to digital TV as many households were deemed not to have their new digital equipment in place. This should serve as a cautionary tale for operators elsewhere banking on receiving the valuable new spectrum anytime soon.

(This article is part of a series of follow-ups on Mobile World Congress 2009 from the GSMA Intelligence team.)