The 21st European Spectrum Management conference took place on June 17-18 in Brussels. A detailed programme can be found on this link:
https://spectrummanagement.eu/
Selected leaders of the fight to keep cultural frequencies mission-ready were heard loud and clear: Jochen Zenthöfer, Wider Spectrum Group; Andreas Wilzeck, Sennheiser; Guillaume Mascot, WMSA. Those two days of collective thinking among all relevant stakeholders confirmed key facts and milestones but fell short of dispelling the many uncertainties that keep looming large on the horizon.
1/ Building blocks of future spectrum management across Europe.
1.1/ As illustrated by the RSPG report on the Digital Networks Act proposal
https://radio-spectrum-policy-group.ec.europa.eu/document/download/1702af17-e481-45da-955e-ed3f7ffbbe36_en?filename=RSPG26-015final-RSPG_Opinion-DNA.pdf&prefLang=sv the governments concerned fail to exude confidence in how effective the Commission’s proposal might prove to improve overall coordination with Member States. Whether carried by the Chair of RSPG or the Chair of ECC, CEPT, their voice seems to contrast the Commission’s bet on the innovation, competitiveness and investment triad with this strengthened article of faith: spectrum is a scarce resource of strategic importance that they own and manage for the benefit of their nation’s citizens; this is sovereignty at its best; their mantra goes along the tune “don’t fix it if it ain’t broken”, even though improved security and resilience, and a real Single Market might notionally result from tighter solidarity and the elusive steps roughly painted as simplification. Public authorities should focus on enabling markets rather than trying to create new ones from scratch.
1.2. While the growing appetite for bandwidth calls for new frequency bands to be made available to the mobile telecom industry (IMT), the current legal framework ensures that information and culture will not fall victim to a new wave of infamous “digital dividends”. Indeed, the EU Decision 2017/899 of 17 May 2017 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dec/2017/899/oj/eng stresses the importance of “access to and dissemination of cultural content and of information and ideas”. More recently, the WRC-23 secured the allocation of the 470-694 MHz band to broadcasting and PMSE until 2031.
1.3/ IMT, the military and other heavyweights do not make it a secret that the sub-700 MHz band is more coveted than ever. IMT “hired guns” go through great pains to explain that the 600 MHz band may suffice for a start, but that the whole gamut of the UHF frequency band concerned will probably be needed in the course of the 2030s. As to the military, they shall be forgiven for undergoing a spell of hubris as they get ready to fight off a Russian invasion by 2030.
2/ Not surprisingly, the above considerations make for a deeply uncertain future.
2.1/ In some countries, the market for DTT is melting down fast. The governments concerned plan to allocate the frequencies thus made vacant to those connectivity providers that spectrum shortage makes unable to address a soaring demand, namely IMT. The WRC-23 decisions should not be read as reaffirming the prerogative of broadcasting even in case the latter is rendered moot by developments in technology: the efficient use of the spectrum has actually been the ITU’s guiding light all along. However, the fact that PMSE operations would be seriously impaired in the process is downright dismissed in a sort of political sleight-of-hand. Nobody seems to worry about putting an abrupt end to the happy cooperation between broadcasting and PMSE: a success story by Single Market standards as a wide variety of services are delivered on the same frequencies throughout the Union; a true love story between two industries, arguably, as exemplified by Arte’s longstanding and mutually beneficial commitment to broadcast festivals and other public concerts. Spectrum sharing works indeed, as long as full transparency is secured, that is.
2.2/ These allocation shifts are based on the myth that innovation is only technology-driven, and that technology-driven innovation is the exclusive prerogative of connectivity providers. Broadcasting is regularly painted as a relic of the past by those blind to the fact that their pledge to undivided resilience, sovereignty and universality owes much to cutting-edge technology: 5G Broadcast is but one example of such commitment. And don’t even think of portraying creativity, the engine behind culture, as the most spectacular example of what the human mind’s innovative skills are up to!
2.3/ The EU Decision of 2017 regarding “the use of the 470-790 MHz frequency band in the Union” is all fine and dandy. It even spells it out that “the DTT and PMSE sectors therefore need long-term regulatory predictability with regard to the availability of sufficient spectrum, so that they can safeguard the sustainable provision and development of their services, in particular free-to-view television, while ensuring an appropriate environment for investments, so that Union and national audiovisual policy objectives such as social cohesion, media pluralism and cultural diversity are met.” However, if revising the rules of spectrum allocation in the EU is left to the sole discretion of the DG CONNECT “silo”, a one-dimensional approach of innovation will prevail over multi-faceted human creativity, while spectrum usage will focus on how best to nurture investment instead of giving this critical piece of connectivity infrastructures a chance to unlock Europe’s innovative culture, especially via live music performances. In a world where quantification reigns supreme, the voice of PMSE is admittedly weak compared to that of telecom operators or Big Tech, almost as inaudible as the voice of the Culture Commissioner throughout the debate on a more effective usage of the spectrum.
In light of the above, those EU governments who care about culture, the member of the European Commission in charge of culture, and possibly UNESCO too, in short all public bodies supposedly catering for the promotion of culture seen as innovation in action as well as a leading proponent of peace among nations – whether of not you call it soft power – should make their voice heard loudly in the debate on the most effective use of the radio spectrum. Otherwise, chances are that the last fraction of it dedicated to quality content and information will fall into the hands of volume-hungry evangelists of Big Data: the culture which is being born on countless stages across Europe will thereupon become a mere relic of the past, a brilliant legacy piece ready for UNESCO’s World Heritage inventory.
