Cost-benefit analysis of options for the 470 – 694 MHz spectrum band

Kalvin Bahia and Francisco Amaya

32nd European Regional ITS Conference, Madrid 2023: Realising the digital decade in the European Union – Easier said than done? from International Telecommunications Society (ITS)

Abstract: Considerations on the optimal approach for managing spectrum are currently at the forefront of the debate around the sub-1 GHz frequency range between the 470-694 MHz, as Governments decide how best to manage this spectrum over the coming years. We apply a cost-benefit analysis in three synthetic countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa countries to identify the policies that will maximise the social and economic value of this spectrum. We find that assigning 80 MHz additional of UHF spectrum to mobile would be 6-24 times greater than the costs incurred by the broadcasting sector to maintain the existing number of digital terrestrial television (DTT) programmes. Additionally, in a scenario where the full 470-694 MHz band is assigned to mobile, the benefits are 4-9 times greater for a typical country in Europe and the Middle East. This reflects the growing demand for 5G bandwidth and the general decline in DTT, driven in significant part by the rise of IPTV and on-demand viewing. The results therefore show that the utilisation of more UHF spectrum for mobile use will provide greater value to society than maintaining it for broadcasting.

JEL-codes: D61 L51 L96 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/277945/1/Bahia-et-al.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:itse23:277945

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 32nd European Regional ITS Conference, Madrid 2023: Realising the digital decade in the European Union – Easier said than done? from International Telecommunications Society (ITS)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().