UK Government To Offer Free TV Filters For 4G Interference 94
judgecorp writes "4G services could interfere with terrestrial TV in the UK, so the government plans to offer one free filter for every household affected by the issue. The analysis suggests that 2.3 million households could be affected, but many of those have cable or satellite TV, so the plan might only need a million filters (each household only gets one, even if they have many TVs)."
when you think of Ofcom's spectrum management... (Score:2, Insightful)
...think of loads of invisible turds flying through the air in every direction. I hear political scientists use the term "regulatory capture" - because catching the largest turds thrown at them is all public servants can do under the new post-Thatcher civil service.
For example, the shortwave censorship which took the Soviets $100Ms to achieve has been successfully implemented by Ofcom by permitting the sale of noisy "Ethernet over powerline" devices.
4G basically means that one person can get fast mobile connectivity to the Internet in the ideal world where each person has access to a mast which he's almost standing underneath. In the real world, it will be yet another tremendous waste of resources so that people can fondle their electronic balls on the move instead of actually talking to the people around them. (People who have real work to do involving communication with others already have 3G or make use of other licensed spectrum.)
Re:Could? (Score:3, Insightful)
what are you talking about? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the US, TV channels have been reclaimed for cellular service twice. First channels 70-83 were turned into the original 800Mhz cellular range (really 850Mhz) and now 60-76 has been carved out for the new 700MHz 3G/4G frequencies.
How is this somehow not sensible?
The US has interference issues as much as Australia does as much as the UK does. Frequencies which used to be TV channels now have (much stronger) cellular transmissions on them. Because TVs were designed to tune to those frequencies, they don't have blocking filters for those frequencies, making interference possible.
In Australia, 126MHz of bandwidth will be reassigned from UHF TV to cellular.
Interference in the US has been minimal (at most) and I doubt the UK or Australia will have much difficulty either.
Re:"Free" ? Who pays for them? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Only just gone Fully Digital - then this? (Score:3, Insightful)
UK governments don't give a stuff about you and me - they only care about the money they can make from selling spectrum to big business. If that means the new use of the spectrum will cause interference to our TV viewing ... weeeell, thats just collateral damage.
Re:Only just gone Fully Digital - then this? (Score:2, Insightful)
To be honest, they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. People want spectrum for fast mobile internet, and they want spectrum from digital television.
Since there are plenty of other ways of getting digital television, I think it's reasonable that a small number of people are affected for the benefit of the majority. Perhaps relax planning regulations for satellite antennae for those affected.