Digital Terrestrial TV: Allocationof Resources and Licensing – A CrossCountry Study of Selected EU Countries

摘要

The paper provides an overview of the digital terrestrial TV in 11 selected EU countries with different number of TV channels available in the terrestrial networks. The idea is to discuss the reasons for these differences and the parameters that affect the number of TV channels/services in different countries. The paper discusses to what extent economic, social and political interests, framing the analogue era, continue to influence the organizational and institutional set-up when switching to digital TV. From a purely technological point of view, one would expect that the number of TV channels made available in the different countries with given spectrum resources would vary only a little taking cross-border frequency interference into consideration. In fact, there are large differences between the various countries, which can be explained by the differences in economic, social and political interests and a certain degree of path-dependence in the organizational and institutional set-up in the different countries.