The World Radiocommunication Conferences (WRC-23) will be held in Dubai from November 20th to December 15th. The WRC are held every three to four years and are organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies (ICTs) in charge of regulating telecommunications at an international level.
These summits are very strategic because the global uses of the radio spectrum are decided there. This is a finite natural and intangible resource with growing demand, so technology advances and the existence of other transmission options such as optic fiber have only partially solved the issue of scarcity. There are services that require an intensive use of the radio spectrum, and when the demand for use exceeds the number of available rights, there is scarcity.
This is precisely what happens with audiovisual services and telecommunications, as strictly speaking, the current shortage only affects the frequency ranges used by these services. In other words, digital broadcast television companies and mobile phone and Internet companies require frequencies on the UHF band to develop, but because this is a scarce resource, there comes a point when their interests collide. And that’s when public authorities intervene.
This is one of the battles that will take place at the WRC-23, where potential changes will be discussed that include making access to the spectrum band intended for free-to-air television more flexible.
In Europe, for example, there has been an ongoing debate in the past year among broadcast television channels, consumer organizations, audiovisual producer organizations, journalist organizations and public television stations to warn about the risk of cutting part of the spectrum intended for these services and giving more space to telecommunications companies because it is considered that this would seriously affect the development of the internal audiovisual market and citizens’ freedom of choice.
This scenario poses questions at several levels: Could a modification of the current distribution of the UHF frequency band put the future of free-to-air television at risk? Would this entail shifting from the predominance of one free-access media consumption and distribution model to another based on payment services? How would this increase in the already notorious power of payment services be expressed in the configuration of the public opinion?
Last but not least: What do we know about the position that the Chilean State will bring to this conference? Is it one that tends to regional specificity, or is it isolated? Are there any documents submitted to public consultation in this regard, either by the Telecommunications Undersecretariat (Subtel) or Foreign Relations? It would be interesting to learn a bit more about this, as the summit starts in a few days.
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