Since its launch in 2005, our Digital Dividend Review (DDR) has considered how to make the spectrum freed up by digital switchover (DSO) available for new uses.
This includes the capacity available within the spectrum that will be retained to carry the six digital terrestrial television (DTT) multiplexes after DSO. This is known as interleaved spectrum because not all this spectrum in any particular location will be used for DTT and so is available for other services on a shared (or interleaved) basis.
In our statement of 13 December 2007 on our approach to awarding the digital dividend, we considered the use of interleaved spectrum by licence-exempt cognitive applications (i.e. those exempted from the need to be licensed under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006 ). We concluded that we should allow cognitive access as long as we were satisfied that it would not cause harmful interference to licensed uses, including DTT and programme-making and special events (PMSE). This could potentially bring substantial benefits to citizens and consumers in the form of new devices and services.
We published a consultation on proposed parameters for licence-exempt cognitive devices using interleaved spectrum on 16 February 2009. In a subsequent statement published on 1 July 2009 we concluded that cognitive devices should either sense the presence of other signals or make use of a geolocation database to determine which spectrum was unused in the vicinity. In that statement we provisionally concluded on the parameters needed for sensing but noted that further discussion would be needed as to how a geolocation database might operate. This discussion document is intended to stimulate and inform such discussion.