Feeling the squeeze
Ofcom proposes new spectrum charge
If it wasn't readily apparent before this announcement, it should be blindingly obvious by now. The government (it seems via Ofcom) wants to earn as much money out of the digital switchover as is technically possible, and such a spectrum tax is basically an admission that the analogue switchoff may not make as much money as originally intended.
The basic problem with such a tax is that any further encouragement for broadcasters to be ultra efficent with the spectrum they use would inevitably cause them to try and pack as much as they can into a single multiplex or frequency. So viewers and listeners are likely to end up with badly pixellated pictures and low grade sound that breaks up each time a car passes.
And you can forget the prospect of HD services on Freeview since they would take up too much space to be profitable.
Commercial operators will also have to pack more services into a multiplex in order to help raise the additional revenue that the spectrum tax will inevitably demand, and ITV's decision to buy the SDN multiplex may turn out to be a costly mistake.
It would be much fairer if broadcasters were taxed on the number of services they provide as opposed to the bandwidth they consume, with a substantial discount (or exemption) for public service broadcasters.
Plus the irony being that after analogue switchoff there will be less of a need to restrict spectrum usage since there will be more free space available.
As it stands, such a spectrum tax would help to kill off Freeview as a long term proposition since such a tax will inevitably be passed on to individual broadcasters by the multiplex owners, though as a side effect it may help to curtail the multi-million pound bids recently made for remaining multiplex slots as a consequence.
Plus I wonder if this 'spectrum charge' will also be applied to satellite broadcasting? Thought not.
If you wish to have your say on Ofcom's proposals, you can do so via the Ofcom website's response form
