Nokia dismisses idea of single mobile TV frequency

Nokia said last week that there was no need for a single mobile TV frequency to temporarily encompass the entire European Union.

The statement, in response to a proposal from the European Union Commission, was made before regulators and industry leaders at an i2010 telecoms conference in Finland.

The mobile industry in Europe wants regulators to allocate a total of 32MHz for mobile television from the UHF range, 470MHz to 750MHz, currently used for TV broadcasts.

However, spectrum is limited in some countries, making it hard to allocate the needed frequencies.

A senior EU Commission official told Reuters last week that the union planned to offer the so-called L-band (1.4GHz) as an interim solution to be used before 2012 when analog broadcasts end in the EU, making more frequencies available for new digital broadcasts.

Jouni Kamarainen, Nokia’s director of industry collaboration in multimedia, rejected the need for the same frequency across the European Union. He said that even though use of the L-band was possible, it was unrealistic and uneconomical.