| UK.gov vows to purify TV with £180m from mobile networks
Bored of waiting for Ofcom's consultation on the possible interference between 4G telephony and Freeview TV, the Ministry of Fun has said it will spend £180m of operators' money mitigating the situation. Ofcom has been looking into the matter since July, and is expected to publish a report soon. But it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that LTE services running at the bottom of the 800Mz band can interfere with Freeview channel 60 and above, and that mitigation will be necessary - though in a lot of cases that could just mean pointing one's TV aerial in the right direction. In most circumstances a £10 filter can be used, and most of the money will be spent nipping round to old people's houses to plug them in. In a few cases that might not work, so Freesat (satellite delivery) or similar kit will be necessary, and there's up to £10,000 per house to make that happen. Other countries, such as Germany, are already deploying next-gen mobile broadband LTE and have pushed the responsibility fully onto the network operators, but (as Ofcom pointed out during its consultation on the matter) back in 2009 only seven per cent of German households were reliant on terrestrial digital TV, compared to 41 per cent in the UK. ® |
Friday 24 February 2012
UK.gov vows to purify TV with £180m from mobile networks
