BRUSSELS -- The squabble between broadcasters and mobile operators over use of spectrum freed by the digital switch often obscures other voices, speakers said Wednesday at the Policy Tracker European Digital Dividend conference. As the big players are, public safety services and other “little guys” are lobbying for access, or protection of existing rights, to UHF spectrum. A battle appears to be shaping up pitting supporters of “cognitive radio” against the program makers and entertainment sector.
BRUSSELS -- EU lawmakers have doubts about European Commission (EC) plans for the digital dividend, members of the European Parliament said Tuesday at the Policy Tracker European Digital Dividend conference. Despite EC assurances that it doesn’t want total harmonization of spectrum at the EU level, MEPs are suspicious of forced coordination, they said, urging that the Commission take a light regulatory approach. Final EC proposals aren’t expected until year’s end.
A European Commission plan for picking and authorizing mobile satellite service providers is set for a Thursday vote in the European Parliament’s Industry, Research and Energy Committee. The February 2007 proposal suggested a harmonized approach to use of the 2 GHz frequency band for MSS but didn’t specify how operators would be chosen and authorized, a draft report by U.K. MEP Fiona Hall said. If approved by the parliament and the Council of Ministers, the plan could spur rollout of mobile Internet services across Europe.
European Commission (EC) plans for a new telecom agency and spectrum reform drew fire Wednesday from EU lawmakers and regulators. An e-communications marketing authority would be “fundamentally at odds” with independent oversight, U.K. Office of Communications CEO Ed Richards told a hearing by the European Parliament Industry, Research and Energy Committee on the regulatory reform package. One MEP called the plan “cumbersome.” Separately, European broadcasters panned EC plans for market-based allocation of UHF spectrum freed by the digital TV switchover.
Public and commercial radio broadcasters from 13 nations will produce and simultaneously broadcast daily news, analysis, debates and major events programs across Europe starting in April, Institutional Relations and Communications Strategy Commissioner Margot Wallstrom said Tuesday. Euranet, a consortium of 16 radio stations with seven associate stations, will roll out a common Internet portal later this year, she told a press briefing. The European Commission (EC) will spend 5.8 million euros per year on the unique service for five years in an effort to bring European issues closer to citizens, she said. The broadcasts, 30 to 60 minutes per day, initially will be in 10 languages, eventually incorporating all 23 EU languages, the EC said. Meanwhile, the EC will lay out its audiovisual communications strategy, especially for radio and TV, in April, Wallstrom’s spokesman told us. The proposals still are taking shape, but the main points likely will involve creating a network of TV stations resembling Euranet, and expanding the EC’s “Europe by Satellite” service from one channel to two so it offers more live coverage of events while giving audiovisual professionals raw material such as stock shots and video news releases for broadcasts, he said.
Unless ISPs and copyright owners agree on a plan to tackle online piracy they will face oversight next year, the U.K. said Friday. The threat to mandate cooperation is part of a broad proposal to promote creative industries there. It includes a review of potential barriers to investment in next-generation broadband networks. The U.K. said it sees “the value of the current discussions” between providers and rights-holders and would prefer voluntary pacts or contracts among the industries involved but if needed will legislate, it said. The government will seek comments this year on how to structure and word legislation that could take effect by April 2009. Tougher enforcement is on the table, said the government. The U.K. Intellectual Property Office will eye options under which business would pay for efforts to stop physical and online IP theft, for a national center to help authorities learn to fight IP crime, and for a ministerial- industry forum where rights-owners, consumers, government and technology companies can discuss new technology. The government will seek comments on authorizing magistrate courts to levy exceptional fines for online and physical copyright infringement. British Phonographic Industry Chief Executive Geoff Taylor praised government’s “holistic view” of the country’s creative economy and said proposals to make ISPs address file-sharing and beef up enforcement “show that the government fully understands the importance of copyright to creators.” The legislative timetable on file-swapping “means that it is now or never for ISPs” to forge workable agreements with rights owners, he said. Any move to involve ISPs in combatting illegal sharing of copyrighted material -- legislative or self-regulatory -- must be “legal, workable and economically sustainable, with cost recovery secured for ISPs,” said the Internet Services Providers’ Association. ISPs want a non-legislative means sensitive to the complex legal framework in which they work, the group said. EU and U.K. law limits providers’ sanctions against users’ private communications, but the ISPA is committed to addressing rights-holders’ wish for a workable approach to issuing notices to individual infringers, the organization said. But, it said, ISPs have no legal responsibility for illegal file-sharing, because the content isn’t hosted on their servers.
A U.K. Office of Communications (Ofcom) plan to deregulate 65 percent of Britain’s wholesale broadband market won enthusiastic approval from the European Commission (EC) Thursday. The case marks the first time a regulator has tailored regulation on a regional, rather than national, basis, and will serve as a template for other EU countries, a spokesman for Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding said at a press conference. This is “one of the most important cases since the creation of the EU telecommunications code 10 years ago,” he said.
The EU is increasingly interested in funding military activity, said Tomas Valasek, director of foreign policy and defense for the Center for European Reform, a London-based think tank. A central question is whether to pool EU money for military satellites, as was done with the Galileo navigation system, he said. The matter is up for debate at a public workshop Thursday in Brussels on space, security and defense policy hosted by the European Parliament (EP) Security and Defense Subcommittee. Valasek will speak.
Europe could lead the global shift to the mobile Internet if operators cut rates and governments make more low-cost bandwidth available, Viviane Reding, the Information Society and Media commissioner, said Monday at the GSMA Mobile World Conference in Barcelona. New business models for the mobile Internet require a fundamental shift to reduced prices and open-access data services, she said. Mobile Internet growth has been disappointing in Europe because data services cost too much, she said. Users want the mobile Web to be as easy to use and open as the fixed- line Internet, and operations must adjust mobile termination rates accordingly, she said. But lower interconnection charges won’t help if service providers don’t also slash inter-operator data roaming tariffs. “My clear preference is that the EU and national regulators will not have to intervene with regulatory measures on data roaming, as we had to on voice roaming,” she said. If by July 1 operators come up with a “credible Eurotariff” by July 1, the EC won’t intervene, Reding said. And policymakers must start freeing bandwidth needed for the mobile Internet, she said. The EC proposed repealing the GSM directive to allow “refarming” of 2G mobile spectrum for 3G use, but the European Parliament hasn’t acted on that proposal, she said. The most important potential boost to wireless bandwidth is the spectrum freed by the digital switch, Reding said, but only if Europe takes a coherent approach to its development and governments don’t wait until 2015 to make mobile allocations. Another issue mobile Internet services uptake is consumer trust, she said. The EU Safer Internet Program to protect children from online threats was expanded to cover mobile phones, but Reding prefers self-regulation to official oversight, she said. She praised Monday’s launch by the GSM Association of the Mobile Alliance Against Child Sexual Abuse. The effort aims to block from mobile networks those seeking to view or profit on child porn, the GSMA said. Conventional Internet connections usually are used for access to content of this kind, but there’s a danger of broadband networks being rolled out by mobile operators being used, too, said the organization. Alliance members will use technical means to bar access to websites identified by an appropriate agency as hosting child-sex content, GSMA said. They also will set up notice and take-down procedures for removing such content on their own services, endorsing creation of hotlines at which people can report finding such material online or on mobile content services, GSMA said. Alliance members other than the association are Hutchison 3G Europe, mobilkom austria, Orange FT Group, Telecom Italia, Telefonica/O2, Telenor Group, TeliaSonera, T-Mobile Group, Vodafone Group and dotMobi.
Irish plans to fast-track a data storage measure on Internet and phone traffic prompted Google to issue a rallying cry Thursday against it. The EU data retention directive “seemed to be going nowhere fast” as member countries missed deadlines for enacting it into national law, European Policy Manager Iarla Flynn wrote on the Google public policy blog. But reports that Ireland is about to follow through raise worries about inadequate debate, he wrote. He urged privacy advocates and service providers to “take advantage of the current window of opportunity” to get their views across.