EU May Push for Competitive Spectrum Trading 68
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."
Re:I know this is off topic but... (Score:2, Offtopic)
I have to cry Shenanigans!!:) According to your Slashdot profile http://slashdot.org/~wilkinsm [slashdot.org] , this is not the case.
Re:I know this is off topic but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ignorance and false markets (Score:1, Insightful)
Physics wise, spectrum is no different than light and very similar to sound. If a EU tried to create a market of certain colors that people could trade or own a monopoly on, would we see this as a healthy market or even just? FYI, the spectrum market is not about free markets, but maintaining RF control. This is just a way of getting 3rd partys to have "skin in t
What the heck? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What the heck? (Score:2)
Re:What the heck? (Score:2)
This is purely a physical limitation, the infrastructure won't support higher frequencies over existing transmitters and arials. But since not all of the free space will be used, it can be sold off to something which is hopeful
Re:Ignorance and false markets (Score:3, Interesting)
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 fr
Re:Ignorance and false markets (Score:2, Informative)
Scarcity means not having sufficient resources to produce enough to fulfill unlimited subjective wants. Alternatively, scarcity implies that not all of society's goals can be attained at the same time, so that we must trade off one good against others.
If trading some goods for others isn't a market, I don't know what is...
Re:Ignorance and false markets (Score:2)
This is precisely backwards. A lack of scarcity would mean that the resource was in infinite supply and non-differentiable (any given unit of the good is equivalent to any other). A good example of such a resource is air: the supply is (effectively) infinite, and (ignoring pollution in some areas) one liter of air
Spectrum shouldn't be owned by anyone (Score:2, Interesting)
Build a wifi/wimax/radio Tcp/ip internet network using these open frequencies.
Everyone benefits.
Re:Spectrum shouldn't be owned by anyone (Score:2)
It should be shared.
It is to be shared - every EU country will now share their spectrum with one large bidder that lives and exists outside of their country. Jobs will be lost, control will be lost... although it seems to me that identity is all but lost anymore with the EU.
Why do we even call the EU countries by their original names anymore? Seems to me, they've lost most of their identity already.
This "suggestion" to share spectrum is really - well, it seems to me - a grab at more power at the
Standard static (Score:2, Interesting)
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 v
Re:Standard static (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Standard static (Score:1)
After all, the chances are, of course, that if there is some intelligence out there is using some kind of CDMA that they will stick around for a while thus giving us a chance to create the technology which can demux their "noise". But still, I wonder if any thought has been given to signals that we have recived already, but which we may not have h
Re:Standard static (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course not. They don't want aliens to invade our planet and destroy humanity for copyright infringement.
Re:Standard static (Score:1)
That's a good one!
--
Music should be free [w33t.com]
Re:Standard static (Score:2)
In Europe they are; CNN = CNN, BCC 1 = BBC 1, RTL 2 = RTL 2.
Has nothing to do with the channel = frequency that' s being used in a particular place or by a particular cable company.
I understand there are still some old-time local stations in the US that go by names like "Channel 9", but they are local stations (and often have a new UHF frequency anyway).
No-Brainer (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No-Brainer (Score:2)
Re:No-Brainer (Score:2)
Re:No-Brainer (Score:2)
CDMA is able to support more customers with fewer base stations and less radio spectrum, because there's no need for each station to use different frequencies from its neighbors, as in GSM. It can switch to lower-bitrate codecs dynamically, allowing more simultaneous calls; doing the same in GSM would require constantly changing the size of each customer's timeslice
Re:No-Brainer (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever been to the US with a mobile? There are multiple standards and a mobile that works in Chicago may not work in Austin, TX or Cincinnati, OH. At least that was my experience in 2004 and 2005 with a tri-band I bought in the EU, I am not sure of the technical details but I think the problem is that technologies (such as iDen [wikipedia.org], Digital AMPS [wikipedia.org], and IS-95 [wikipedia.org]) can differ across US states. In Europe it's pretty much all GSM/UMTS.
They already do. My father's mobile worked fine in Turkey (both Instanbul and at a tourist resort on the south coast, probably not far from Antalya) already in 1997 when I did not have one myself yet. My Norwegian mobile has been tested to work fine in Italy, Ireland, England, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and pretty much everywhere I brought it, except parts of the US.
Re:No-Brainer (Score:2)
I had several sarcastic remarks about mobiles in the US, GSM and the utter lack of knowledge behind your post. I gave up choosing which one to use :)
Re:No-Brainer (Score:2)
Re:No-Brainer (Score:1)
Auction of 3G licenses in UK (Score:2, Informative)
The last online auction of 3G licenses fetched 22.5 billion Pounds against the expectations of 3 billion. The government never knows what the frequencies are worth to the telephone companies, so, let them fight it out in a transparent auction. Devide 22.5 billion pounds with UK's population. It was the biggest auction in history.
Re:Auction of 3G licenses in UK (Score:1)
Re:Auction of 3G licenses in UK (Score:1)
Interesting that no one ever seems to see these auctions for what they really are -- a government tax on a zero cost medium.
Re:Auction of 3G licenses in UK (Score:2)
Re:Auction of 3G licenses in UK (Score:3, Informative)
here [google.com] is what the current utilization looks like.
And of course, dividing up the spectrum is more complicated than just giving everyone an appropriate sized piece of the pie. Some applications are more sensitive to their neighbors, or harmonics, or band-sharing or can't be moved for infrastrusture reasons. Would you shut down Arecibo to make your plan simpler?
Re:Auction of 3G licenses in UK (Score:1)
Of course the government should do it. They just shouldn't be 'selling' it for billions to the highest bidder almost without regard as to how it's going to be used. Under the current system the best parts of the spectrum go to those with the most money not necessarily those with the best ideas.
Re:Auction of 3G licenses in UK (Score:2)
Not that I disagree, but in general isn't it true that those who can't get the funding to purchase access to a suitable part of the radio spectrum don't have the best ideas? Or at least were evidently incapable of convincing the VCs that their ideas were feasable?
As a scarce resource, I would agree that portions of the radio spectrum should be privately ownable (for a speci
Re:Auction of 3G licenses in UK (Score:2)
But as someone else mentioned, the market solution is there specifically so that the
Anyone for monopoly? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Anyone for monopoly? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Anyone for monopoly? (Score:2)
Don't worry though, if the government takes control of capital (Left Wing Socialism), or capital takes control of government (Right Wing Socialism), the end result is likely to be indistinguishable aside from a few cosmetic differences (S
Re:Anyone for monopoly? (Score:1)
Re:Anyone for monopoly? (Score:2)
Re:Anyone for monopoly? (Score:2)
With regards to monopo
Re:Anyone for monopoly? (Score:2)
The EU is attacking "monopolies" like Microsoft, not because Microsoft is a monopoly (because, of course, any state run industry is a monopoly), but because th
Good for end-users... (Score:1)
If you live in Austria you've got the choice between 4-5 different mobile phone providers and none of them offers a flat rate. Germany on the other hand offers a flat rate for 25Euros per month. Best deal you can currently get.... if you live in Germany.
Same with Broadband. A typicall 2mbit/512kbit connection in Austria costs about the same (45Euros) as a 100mbit connection in Sweden.
So, I am all for o
Spectrum Trading... (Score:2, Funny)
digital TV (Score:2)
2012 switch?
Here that switch is going to be made in october this year.
It is going to free up some spectrum, but I don't know if it will be a lot. We now have 3 national channels broadcast in analog, plus a lot of channels only broadcast on satellite and cable.
The frequencies of analog TV will be given to digital TV broadcasting companies, who will most likely put more channels (the existing c
Re:digital TV (Score:1)
Re:digital TV (Score:2)
Here in the Netherlands those are (almost) not available. Yet in October 2006 the analog network will be switched OFF!
We have to use set-top-boxes.
The most likely reason for this is that direct reception is almost nonexistent here (the government claims the switchoff will affect less than 100,000 viewers).
Almost everyone is on either cable, satellite, or di