Good news from Geneva – the future of terrestrial broadcasting in Europe is safe for now, thanks to the decision at WRC-15 to keep the UHF band exclusively for DTT services.
As the EBU reports, this means that terrestrial broadcasting – which means Freeview in the UK – will be safe, with a review of the whole band in 2023. That means that broadcasters and consumers now have a fair degree of certainty about what happens next.
The review in 2023 is more or less in line with the recommendations of the Lamy Report, which suggested 2025, and means it’s likely we’ll still have terrestrial TV until the late 2020s at the least.
For a quick idea of the timescales involved in this sort of thing, it was the 2012 WRC that allocated the 700MHz band to mobile broadband, and the clearance of that is due to be done around 2020.
I should have a piece up on The Register soon with a bit more about what exactly this may mean for Freeview.
Update: Read more on The Register
