Digital Dividend
Research shows an increase of 10 percentage points in mobile penetration boosts GDP by 0.6% in developing markets (source: London Business School)
The substantial amount of low-frequency spectrum being freed up by the switchover from analogue to digital terrestrial television is known as the digital dividend.
Located between 200 MHz and 1 GHz, digital dividend spectrum offers an excellent balance between transmission capacity and geographic coverage. With the good signal propagation characteristics of radio signals in low frequencies, individual base stations can serve relatively large geographic areas, meaning that communications services can be provided in rural areas at lower cost.
If around 100 MHz of the spectrum currently used by analogue TV was re-allocated to mobile communications, the mobile industry could dramatically speed up the roll out of broadband communications and increase coverage, particularly in rural and hard-to-reach areas.
The analogue TV switch-off and the resulting digital dividend provides a unique opportunity for a significant reallocation of spectrum. With the switchover process in place in most countries, it is vital that governments decide quickly how this released spectrum will be used.
The GSMA recommends that regulators harmonise their digital dividend spectrum policies with those of neighbouring countries, as manufacturers can gain significant economies of scale by producing devices compatible with internationally-identified harmonised frequency bands.
Without the identification of common bands, mobile broadband device costs could become prohibitively high, leading to lower take-up of services and fewer socio-economic benefits.
