Clearing the skies: European spectrum policy and future challenges of DTT in Finland and Spain

Abstract

Digital terrestrial television (DTT) in Europe is facing a serious challenge as it will lose about 30 per cent of its current spectrum resources for mobile services by 2020. European countries originally agreed to release only the 800 MHz band from TV to mobile as the digital dividend. However, over European opposition, the release of the 700 MHz band as the second digital dividend was accepted at the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) in 2012 and confirmed in 2015. This article analyses the development of broadcasting and spectrum policies in two DTT pioneer countries to understand their different capacities in adapting to this change in European spectrum policy. Whereas Finland was the first country to decide on rapid release of the second digital dividend, Spain was still struggling to clear the first one. We argue that any geographic and demographic differences explain only a part of the contrast, which is based on divergent national broadcast and spectrum policy contexts.