British media regulator Ofcom has announced plans to reshuffle the UK’s radio spectrum in order to make room for a host of new web-enabled technologies.
The body has produced a new consultation document detailing plans to alter the spectrum in 2018. It suggests that mobile web usage in Britain will increase 80-fold by 2030 and that these alterations of the spectrum are vital to prepare for this.
In an interview with dailymail.co.uk, chief technology officer Steve Unger painted a picture of the new web-enabled world that Brits could expect to enjoy in the future.
He said: “In the future it won’t be just mobiles and tablets connected to the internet; billions of things including cars, crops, coffee machines and cardiac monitors will also be connected, using tiny slivers of spectrum to get online. This is likely to deliver large benefits to society; however there isn’t an unlimited supply of spectrum to meet this extraordinary demand.”
Independent.co.uk reports that the reshuffle could make TV and radio aerials in up to 30 per cent of British households redundant. The spectrum occupied by Freeview boxes is highly likely to be changed as well as that occupied by a number of radio stations in the UK.
