Transforming the digital dividend into social benefits and economic growth

The document lays out a potential for the digital dividend to transform into social benefits and economic growth for Europe. The digital dividend, the freeing up of highly valuable radio frequencies due to the switchover from analogue to digital terrestrial TV in Europe, ‘represents a unique opportunity for Europe to meet the growing demand for radio spectrum […], and to stimulate the take-up of new wireless services, […] as well as to support the development of terrestrial broadcasting’. Conducive to this, the communication proposes an “EU Roadmap” for implementing a set of agreed actions. Some of the proposed actions include: – Achieving complete switch-off of analogue TV by 2012. – Achieving the EU-wide opening of the 790-862 MHz sub-band to electronic communications services. – Promoting collaboration between Member States to share future broadcasting network deployment plans. – Considering wider deployment of Single Frequency Networks (SFNs).