Germany will be the first country after the UK to harmonise the so-called 800MHz band (780-862MHz) for mobile broadband use, and others will follow soon, it emerged yesterday at Informa’s Digital Switchover Strategies conference in London.

Pearse O’Donahue, head of the Radio Spectrum Policy unit in the European Commission’s Information, Society and Media Directorate-General, told delegates that the German move indicated the EC was succeeding in its mission to persuade Member States of the benefits of earmarking a common frequency band across the EU for possible future use by future mobile broadband services (see previous post here).

Els Hendricks, head of European affairs at commercial broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1, confirmed that Germany’s agreement to harmonisation was imminent, subject to the regulator agreeing to certain conditions demanded by German broadcasters.

These included future occupants of the 800MHz band compensating broadcasters for the costs associated with migrating any broadcast services already occupying these frequencies.

In the UK, Ofcom has put these costs at £5-18m.

Matthew Conway, director of operations at Ofcom’s Spectrum Policy Group, indicated there were other European territories apart from Germany that would follow the UK’s lead, but declined to identify them.

However, Elena Puigrefagut, a senior technical engineer at the European Broadcasting Union, argued that those countries that had so far agreed to harmonization were confined to those where the costs of doing so were lowest, because they had minimal usage of the 800MHz band. The EBU’s analysis showed that the first five Member States to agree to the move - Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, France and the UK - all fell into this category.

She concluded that the costs of harmonization were very significant for the majority of European territories, and predicted that it would lead to a ‘second switchover’.