The digital dividend refers to the
radio spectrum
The radio spectrum is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum with frequencies from 0 Hz to 3,000 GHz (3 THz). Electromagnetic waves in this frequency range, called radio waves, are widely used in modern technology, particula ...
which is released in the process of
digital television transition. When
television broadcast
A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay television providers. Until the mid-1 ...
ers switch from
analog TV
Analog television is the original television technology that uses analog signals to transmit video and audio. In an analog television broadcast, the brightness, colors and sound are represented by amplitude, phase and frequency of an analog s ...
to digital-only platforms, part of the
electromagnetic spectrum
The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of frequencies (the spectrum) of electromagnetic radiation and their respective wavelengths and photon energies.
The electromagnetic spectrum covers electromagnetic waves with frequencies ranging fro ...
that has been used for broadcasting will be freed-up because
digital television
Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative adva ...
needs less spectrum than analog television, due to
lossy compression
In information technology, lossy compression or irreversible compression is the class of data compression methods that uses inexact approximations and partial data discarding to represent the content. These techniques are used to reduce data size ...
. One reason is that new
digital video compression technology can transmit numerous
digital subchannels using the same amount of spectrum used to transmit one analog
TV channel
A television channel is a terrestrial frequency or virtual number over which a television station or television network is distributed. For example, in North America, "channel 2" refers to the terrestrial or cable band of 54 to 60 MHz, with ...
. However, the primary reason is that digital transmissions require much less of a
guard band
In radio, a guard band is an unused part of the radio spectrum between radio bands, for the purpose of preventing interference.
It is a narrow frequency range used to separate two wider frequency ranges to ensure that both can transmit simultane ...
on
either side, since they are not nearly as prone to
RF interference
Electromagnetic interference (EMI), also called radio-frequency interference (RFI) when in the radio frequency spectrum, is a disturbance generated by an external source that affects an electrical circuit by electromagnetic induction, electrost ...
from
adjacent channel
In broadcasting an adjacent channel is an AM, FM, or TV channel that is next to another channel. First-adjacent is immediately next to another channel, second-adjacent is two channels away, and so forth. Information on adjacent channels is ...
s. Because of this, there is no longer any need to leave
empty channels to protect stations from each other, in turn allowing stations to be repacked into fewer channels, leaving more contiguous spectrum to be
allocated for other
wireless
Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most ...
services.
The digital dividend usually locates at frequency bands from 174 to 230 MHz (
VHF) and from 470 to 862 MHz (
UHF). However, the location and size of digital dividend vary among countries due to the factors including geographical position and penetration of satellite/cable services.
As a result of the technological transition, a significant number of governments are now planning for or allocating their digital dividends. For examples, the United States completed its transition on 12 June 2009 and auctioned the spectrum. Meanwhile, Australia is still planning for it.
Potential uses
In countries where the digital television transition has not yet finished, over-the-air broadcasting services are still using radio-frequency spectrum in what is known as the
Very High Frequency (VHF) and
Ultra High Frequency
Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter ( ...
(UHF) bands.
After the completion of digital transition, part of this spectrum will be released as digital dividend to provide a range of new communication services. Proposed utilization of the released spectrum includes:
* Digital Terrestrial TV
* Advanced Mobile Services
* Broadcast Mobile TV
* Commercial Wireless Broadband services, both to fixed locations and mobile devices
* Wireless Broadband services for public safety and disaster relief (PPDR)
* Services ancillary to broadcasting and programming (SAB/SAP)
Analog television spectrum in the UHF bands is valuable to potential purchasers because of its ability to carry signals over long distances, penetrate buildings and carry large amounts of data.
Many countries favour using a part of the digital dividend for electronic communications services, such as
mobile communications
Mobile telephony is the provision of telephone services to phones which may move around freely rather than stay fixed in one location. Telephony is supposed to specifically point to a voice-only service or connection, though sometimes the l ...
and
wireless broadband
Wireless broadband is telecommunications technology that provides high-speed wireless Internet access or computer networking access over a wide area. The term comprises both fixed and mobile broadband.
The term broadband
Originally the word ...
. These new services would utilize the upper part of the UHF band (790–862 MHz).
Allocation for mobile services
One proposal to utilize the digital dividend is to develop an international mobile service using frequencies which will be released after the completion of digital transition in a global range. This part spectrum suits for 3G mobile telecommunication service. However, it would be difficult to fully realize the potentials of the digital dividend because countries in the world will not finish the switch to digital TV simultaneously. Further it is an issue involving factors such as topography, penetration of satellite/cable services, the requirements for regional service, spectrum usage in neighboring countries, etc.
In 2007, th
World Radiocommunication Conference revised the allocation of a portion of UHF spectrum for mobile broadband services and advanced mobile services. Although the allocations set a framework, they do not dictate member countries how to allocate digital dividend spectrum. Rather they can take national requirements into consideration. Countries in global regions one and three, such as
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...
, the
Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...
,
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
,
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...
,
Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...
and
Australia use the spectrum range 790–960 MHz, which is one of the bands dedicated to the roll-out of
international mobile telecommunications (IMT). Some countries in global region three, such as
Bangladesh
Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...
,
China,
Korea
Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...
,
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
,
Japan,
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
,
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
,
Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
, and
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
, identified the band or portions of the band 698–790 MHz for the implementation of IMT. Meanwhile, the spectrum 698–960 MHz was planned for implementation of IMT in global region two, the Americas. However, part of the spectrum, 806–960 MHz, is already used for
mobile telecommunications
Mobile telephony is the provision of telephone services to phones which may move around freely rather than stay fixed in one location. Telephony is supposed to specifically point to a voice-only service or connection, though sometimes the l ...
in global region two.
Benefits of mobile broadband use
Experts see several benefits of using the freed spectrum for mobile broadband because it is cheaper than fixed broadband to provide
last mile connectivity.
It could facilitate
economic development
In the economics study of the public sector, economic and social development is the process by which the economic well-being and quality of life of a nation, region, local community, or an individual are improved according to targeted goals and ...
. McKinsey's report suggested that every 10% increase in household broadband penetration will bring 1.4% increase of
GDP
Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold (not resold) in a specific time period by countries. Due to its complex and subjective nature this measure is ofte ...
growth. Usually GDP growth leads to job creations. One good thing about mobile broadband is that mobile penetration is much higher than PC penetration, that means mobile broadband will help to the
broadband penetration to increase faster.
Mobile broadband could be used to serve people living in rural area and low income groups, such as
farmer
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer m ...
s. It could provide them medical, educational and other general information.
For bridging the digital divide
Some researchers argued that digital dividend could provide opportunity to bridging the
digital divide. They argued that because of the characteristics of this spectrum fewer
radio station
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radi ...
s are needed to cover a given area. Therefore, the cost to provide broadband in remote rural areas could be significantly reduced. In the past, a profitable roll out of
fixed line
A landline (land line, land-line, main line, home phone, fixed-line, and wireline) is a telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber telephone line for transmission, as distinguished from a mobile cellular network, which uses ...
broadband infrastructure is not feasible because the necessary investments to cover the long distances are too high. However,
wireless broadband
Wireless broadband is telecommunications technology that provides high-speed wireless Internet access or computer networking access over a wide area. The term comprises both fixed and mobile broadband.
The term broadband
Originally the word ...
using the spectrum of the digital dividend offers an opportunity to overcome the digital divide.
But not all of them agree with the point. Those who do not agree, argued that this approach suffers from the trade-off between reach and speed significantly limit scalability of the network. If the transmission demands grow at current rates, a wireless broadband access network covering large areas will be likely outdated before being deployed. Therefore, the digital divide will still exist.
Digital dividend policies around the world
United States
700 MHz Auction
The chunk of spectrum being freed from broadcasting was auctioned for commercial uses in the U.S. The 700 MHz auction, known officially as Auction 73, concluded with 1090 provisionally winning bids covering 1091 licenses and raised a total of $19,120,378,000 in winning bids and $18,957,582,150 in net winning bids.
Due to its physical attributes, 700 MHz band penetrates walls fairly easily and well. This makes this chunk of spectrum perfect for either cellular or long-range wireless broadband. A telco could build a powerful wireless network by holding it. An ISP could also make a fortune with it.
The auction went the following way: part of the available spectrum, which spans 698–806 MHz, had already been auctioned off, some of it is reserved for the nationwide public safety broadband network that will be constructed over the next few years. The remaining was divided up into A,B,C,D, and E blocks, regionally. Every bidder was supposed to secretly declare their intent to the FCC before the auction, but Google did not comply and kept its intentions secret. Winners picked up their allocations around two months after the auction.
There was a lot of excitement over the auction of C and D blocks. Block C was the prime spectrum that Verizon and others, such as Google, were interested in. This block covered two 11 MHz chunks of spectrum that could be bid on together, making 22 MHz available. Besides the bidders of this chunk, the other reason drawing attention to this block was that Google convinced the FCC to load up with two open-access provisions: (i) the winner has to make the network open so any "safe" device can use it; (ii) they have to make their own networked devices open as well.
The block D licenses covers two 5 MHz sections for a total of 10 MHz. This block is special compared with other blocks because the winners must be part of the Public Safety/Private Partnership established by the FCC. Therefore, the winner's wireless network has to be good enough to meet public safety specifications for coverage and redundancy. Furthermore, the winner could operate two public safety portions, 10 MHz, as a commercial network. Commercial traffic can also be carried over the public safety portion of the network as long as it is not being utilized.
The blocks A, B, and E covered 30 MHz in total. The licenses for each of the blocks were only good for small geographic areas. The FCC's intention was that the winners would use the spectrum for regional or rural area telecommunication services.
There were some other conditions for the winners of blocks A, B, C, and E. For blocks A, B and E, winners needed to cover at least 35 percent of the territory of their license within four years, and a full 70 percent of the territory within 10 years. For block C the winners were also required to cover 40 percent of the territory within four years, 75 percent coverage within 10 years. The FCC will automatically reclaim "unserved portions of the license area" from companies that do not meet the build-out requirements.
Not all of the licenses were sold. On April 15, 2011, the FCC announced that they would hold auction 92 on July 19, 2011, to sell the available license of 700 MHz. The results for all of the blocks were as follows:
=Block A
=
Verizon Wireless and U.S. Cellular Corp. got 25 licenses each. But no one company dominated the A-Block. Other notable winners included CenturyTel Inc. and Cellular South. Verizon Wireless's licenses mainly covered densely populated urban areas, while U.S. Cellular was focused on the ones for the Midwest, Northeast and Northwest.
=Block B
=
AT&T Mobility got one-third of the available licenses, spending $6.6 billion. U.S. Cellular snapped 127 licenses which are near its current market clusters in the Midwest, Northeast and Northwest. Verizon Wireless scooped up 77 B-Block licenses.
=Block C
=
Verizon Wireless paid more than $4.6 billion for licenses covering the contiguous 48 states as well as Hawaii. Triad 700 L.L.C. picked up C-Block licenses covering Alaska, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, while Small Ventures USA L.P. bought the license for the C Block covering the Gulf of Mexico. Also in Tanzania
=Block D
=
No licenses were sold in this block and new auctions were scheduled to sell it.
=Block E
=
EchoStar Corp, satellite television provider, picked up 168 of the total 176 E-Block licenses for more than $711 million. Qualcomm also bought 5 licenses covering markets in California, Arizona and the Northeast.
=The winners
=
Of the 214 applicants approved to bid in the FCC's auction, 101 walked away with spectrum.
Verizon Wireless
Verizon is an American wireless network operator that previously operated as a separate division of Verizon Communications under the name Verizon Wireless. In a 2019 reorganization, Verizon moved the wireless products and services into the div ...
's winnings covered seven of the 10 regional C-Block licenses, as well as 77 licenses in the B Block and 25 licenses in the A Block.
AT&T Mobility spent $6.64 billion for 227 B-Block licenses.
The remaining C-block licenses were won by a number of operators:
* Triad 700 L.L.C. took the Alaska and Puerto Rico/U.S. Virgin Islands licenses and Small Ventures USA L.P. took the Gulf of Mexico license.
*
Qualcomm Inc. won nine licenses for a total of around $500 million: B-Block licenses covering Yuba City and Imperial, Calif., and Hunterdon, N.J.; and five E Block licenses.
*
MetroPCS Communications Inc. scored only one license, the A Block for Boston, for $313 million.
* Chevron walked away with the A, B and E blocks covering the Gulf of Mexico, most likely for the company's oil operations there.
* Cavalier Wireless spent $61.8 million for licenses across the A and B Blocks.
*
Cox Communications won $304 million in the A and B blocks.
*
U.S. Cellular won 152 licenses for $401 million in the A and B Block.
* Regional telecom operator
CenturyTel
Lumen Technologies, Inc. (formerly CenturyLink) is an American
telecommunications company headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, that offers communications, network services, security, cloud solutions, voice, and managed services. The company is a ...
Inc. spent close to $150 million for 48 B-Block licenses and 21 A-Block licenses.
*
Vulcan Ventures, owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, won two licenses, in the Seattle/Tacoma and Portland/Salem markets, for $112 million.
* Regional wireless provider
Cellular South spent $191.5 million on A- and B-Block licenses.
600 MHz Auction
Europe
The
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...
has not yet worked out a specific plan on how to use the freed spectrum. According to the visions of trans-European
4G mobile wireless, economists predict that it will bring €50 billion
economic growth. To utilize the full benefit of the digital dividend, the European countries at least have two steps to take: first, all member states of the European Union are requested to make sure that the switchover to digital transmission technologies will be completed by 1 January 2012. Therefore, the complete digital dividend should be made available for communication services. Second, member states shall use a standardized regulatory framework to ensure the use for the
790–862 MHz sub-band for electronic communications services throughout the EU (
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...
2009).
The EU published a schedule table in the 2009 Report for the European Commission ''
'Exploiting the digital dividend' – a European approach''.
Table: Spectrum auction plans for the digital dividend and left-over 2G and 3G spectrum in 2009
, the
digital television transition has been completed in all of the
member states of the European Union.
Canada
In
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, the digital dividend auction was held in 2014 to allocate 108 MHz of spectrum from 698 to 804 MHz. This followed a consultation by
Industry Canada on whether to abolish or at least scale back restrictions on foreign investment considered among the most restrictive in the G8 group of countries.
Australia
In
Australia an independent engineering consultancy firm, Kordia Pty Ltd, was commissioned by the
to identify issues and options for releasing spectrum after analog television is switched off.
Kordia found that it is possible for 126 MHz of UHF spectrum to be released as a digital dividend.
The government also have some other factors to consider:
# The uncertainty of future uses of spectrum;
# Australia needs to align
spectrum allocation
Frequency allocation (or spectrum allocation or spectrum management) is the allocation and regulation of the electromagnetic spectrum into radio frequency bands, normally done by governments in most countries. Because radio propagation does no ...
s with other major developed countries;
# Public interest.
Based on the political and technological considerations Australia government's target digital dividend is 126 MHz of contiguous UHF spectrum.
See also
*
Spectrum auction
A spectrum auction is a process whereby a government uses an auction system to sell the rights to transmit signals over specific bands of the electromagnetic spectrum and to assign scarce spectrum resources. Depending on the specific auction form ...
*
White spaces (radio)
In telecommunications, white spaces refer to radio frequencies allocated to a broadcasting service but not used locally. National and international bodies assign frequencies for specific uses and, in most cases, license the rights to broadcast ...
*
White spaces (database)
References
{{Reflist, 1
External links
FCC - 700 MHz BandThe 700MHz spectrum band: market driversand harmonisation challenges worldwide
Broadcast engineering
Digital television
Radio spectrum