26 executive summary theibcdaily The fight for spectrum
Don’t sell spectrum to telcos
Fernando Bittencourt
General Director of Engineering, TV Globo Region: Brazil
Interview by Chris Forrester F
“Selling spectrum could render broadcasters obsolete in a few years”
ernando Bittencourt
pulled no punches during his panel discussion at IBC on ‘The Future of Broadcast
Spectrum’. He is critical of the ITU, and to a certain extent his own government, for planning to yield broadcast spectrum to telcos. “We are constantly told that
we are at the last stage of technology for broadcasting over the air, and that somehow or other broadcasting to many viewers has no future role,” said TV Globo’s engineering chief. “I absolutely do not believe this to be true! “I accept that new
technologies are coming and that we must not ignore satellite or cable or OTT as we improve services and choice for consumers. But I believe big mistakes are being made, and this includes the ITU and many other administrations. The mistake is to assume that broadcasting’s days are over and that somehow or other telcos will do the job better. These same telcos, which in most cases, have yet to embrace 3G let alone 4G and 5G, will never be able to cope or match what a broadcaster can achieve.” “We are under threat in Brazil
from an administration wanting to take from us a large portion of our broadcast spectrum, and this could render broadcasters obsolete in just a few years.” Brazil – along with much of
Latin America – transmits digitally in ISDB-T, which gives broadcasters the additional benefits of the Japanese-
developed ‘OneSeg’ 15-fps technology for portable devices. “It is good technology, so in a few years we could have a better over-the-air technology, starting with 4K or 8K, but we need that spectrum in order to migrate over time to these new technologies. “We know that we could
transmit 4K or 8K via satellite, cable and fibre optic in the future. But we could not deliver [4K/8K] over the air, and this is extremely important in Brazil where the vast majority of our viewers use it for their TV signals. Free-to-view forms the backbone of not just TV Globo but other broadcasters, and if there is no mechanism to transmit 4K over the air then you are effectively out of business.” “In Europe and the US it is
already too late because governments have sold the spectrum to the telcos. I want to stress that we must have room to expand, to plan for 4K and 8K and for bigger screens in the home, as well as broadcasting to mobile and second screens. It seems to me that everyone has forgotten that telephony is a one-to-one technology. How many people using a telco-supplied signal will it take to collapse the network next year during the Brazil World Cup? Moreover it is a hugely expensive approach for mass viewing.” “We risk a situation where
Brazil might be helping produce 4K for the world from the Olympics in 2016 but we cannot show the images terrestrially because we might not have the spectrum,” he added.
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