Network management Toolkit

Story: Google gets set for spectrum race

Posted by: julian (Tuesday 4 December 2007, 11:13 PM)

Not good news

This story rings the alarm bells for me for two reasons. Firstly from a professional point of view as a Sound Engineer, and a personal point of view.

This story is about the situation in America, but OFCOM the government watchdog that looks after spectrum in the UK is wanting to do something similar when the analogue TV is switched off in this country. A process that started a few weeks ago and is set to complete in 2012. The UHF TV spectrum in the UK is in the 800Mhz area but the principles are the same.

My professional concern is that the space used in between the current analogue TV channels are currently used by radio mics. If the analogue TV service is to be replaced by a data service such as proposed by Google. this space will probably be unusable for radio mics in the future. This issue hit the headlines a few months ago and OFCOM have been forced to admit that radio mic users will have to be factored into any future plans. Quite how that will work is not yet known, so the opinion in the sound industry is a battle has been won but the war is still going on.

From a personal point of view, the thought of Google and their advertisement driven business model running and ruling a mobile data service drives shivers up my spine. I've mentioned before on this site my hatred for excessive advertising. I can only see it getting worse if the likes of Google get their way.

View complete profile

Send private message

View all posts

julian
Stoke Poges, UK
Member since: April 2007

Site Activity Rating:

This member is ranked #30 in our top 100

Full Talkback thread

Story: Google gets set for spectrum race

Back to: Google gets set for spectrum race

More In Network management

Featured Talkback

Could it be that ISP’s are making this out to be a bigger problem than it actually is? We’re a small country with an internet penetration of less than 60%, for every Youtuber there’s someone who only uses the internet to check their emails, more people surf on their mobile handsets than a few years ago. Surely things should even themselves up.