EU May Push for Competitive Spectrum Trading

anaesthetica writes "The Financial Times is reporting that Viviane Reding, the EU media commissioner, wants to spur a pan-European market through which companies could buy and sell cross-border access to the European spectrum regime, including frequencies used by TV, radio, mobile telephone and broadband services. Large European media companies are skeptical about the spectrum trading plan, saying both that there is no logic behind a pan-European telecom model, and that such a plan could interfere with satellite radio. Ms. Reding believes that the change would spur harmonization of the fragmented European telecom band allocation. This change is set to coincide with the 2012 switch from analog to digital TV broadcasting, when a significant portion of the spectrum will be freed up."

Spectrum shouldn't be owned by anyone

[zymano]

It should be shared.

Build a wifi/wimax/radio Tcp/ip internet network using these open frequencies.

Everyone benefits.

Standard static

[w33t]

This sounds less like a change in the method of comepetition and more like the end result will be a standardization. I like the idea of standards.

Here in the states, my father is always calling me and saying, "turn the tv to channel 3 quick!" and I'm like what station is channel 3? and he's like "it's channel 3!".

He never seemed to have gotten the idea that different networks operate on different channels depending upon provider and locale.

Of course, I know that channel 3 and 10 and 13 are for some reason very special numbers in the television scheme of things.

I wonder, do you think that some day television channels will be replaced by URLs of some sort?

It's going to be strange when the airwaves are free of broadcast television, and when one day in the garage you run across an old tv, hook it up, prop up the antennas and see that there really is nothing being broadcasted.

I feel sorry already for the extraterrestrial's SETI programs - they only have a small window of less than a century to grab our raw carrier waves.
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Music should be free [w33t.com]

Re:Anyone for monopoly?

[HermanAB]

Not odd at all - they don't want to pay multiple times to maintain their monopolies - it is all an anti-monopolistic plot by money grubbing beaurocrats against the poor and sensitive spectrum monopolies - sniff...

Re:Standard static

[MichaelSmith]

I feel sorry already for the extraterrestrial's SETI programs - they only have a small window of less than a century to grab our raw carrier waves.

I think it was Arthur C Clarke who suggested this as a reason for the failure of SETI. Nobody else is wasting energy by broadcasting either.

I think overall the amount of leakage into space from earth will be greater in the future but it will be so heavily compressed and spread across the available spectrum that it may be confused with noise.

Re:Ignorance and false markets

[twem2]

Firstly:
The RF Spectrum is land, it is a fixed quantity.

Secondly:
Being land, scarcity comes into play, There's only a limited number of frequencies suitable for ionospheric propogation for example, and these frequencies change with time of day, season, sunspot number and many other factors (which aren't fully understood) so for reliable communications a range of frequencies is needed (and now with Automatic Link Establishment communications over HF is much more reliable).
Similarly, there's a limit on the frequencies which don't get absorbed by normal atmospheric conditions, a limit on the range of frequencies for reliable short range communications.
And the demmand for frequencies is very high. The RF spectrum is packed with users, be they domestic, broadcast, commercial, military, emergency services, scientific or PMR.

Thirdly:
Markets fail when scarcity is involved. They cease to be efficient, the very definition of failure, so your statement that you cannot have a market until there is scarcity is just plain wrong.

I'd favour a transparent auction of parts of the spectrum for commercial users, with a Land Value Tax on spectrum use.