This piece from the International Herald Tribune puts the French debate over mobile broadband’s potential cannibalisation of DTT frequencies in context.

It seems the French government is one of the few European administrations (the others being the Finnish, Swedish and Swiss authorities) to have agreed to an ITU recommendation in 2007 that its members should set aside some of their UHF frequencies for mobile broadband - this despite subsequent plans to allocate these to DTT.

The IHT article quotes a Nokia Siemens executive who points out that a wireless broadband network transmitting over UHF frequencies rather than the current 2.1GHz band used in Europe would require 75% fewer base stations to cover the same area.

The article also notes that while the European Commission is in favour of a harmonised mobile broadband frequency, the spectrum experts’ group that advises it, the Radio Spectrum Policy Group, is split. Moreover, the EU’s council of ministers has rejected a plan by Viviane Reding, the EU’s telecoms commissioner, to give the EC a role in co-ordinating spectrum at a pan-European level. (Reding is on record as advocating a co-ordinated frequency band for European mobile TV services).

This one will run and run….