4G (Interference)

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) on securing this important debate. As he points out, apart from a brief evidence session before his Select Committee, Parliament has not debated 4G interference with digital terrestrial television, so this debate is a useful opportunity to set out the Government’s position and perhaps address some of the concerns that he highlighted in his excellent speech.

First, I make it clear—my hon. Friend is an expert in such matters, but those watching the debate may not be—that we are talking about interference from the 800 MHz spectrum. As hon. Members may know, after the spectrum auction, mobile phones will use a range of spectrums—800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1,800 MHz, 2.1 GHz and 2.6 GHz—but only the 800 MHz spectrum risks causing interference as it is adjacent to the 700 MHz spectrum used for digital terrestrial television. It is important to make that point, because as my hon. Friend points out, today sees the launch of the UK’s first 4G service by EE, as we must now learn to call it, but that is in the 1,800 MHz spectrum, so nobody need go home tonight in fear that they will miss “BBC News at Ten” or “Newsnight.”

Secondly, only digital terrestrial television viewers will be affected. Again, effectively that is people watching Freeview. People who get their television through Freesat, cable or a commercial satellite provider will not be affected by the 800 MHz spectrum.

My hon. Friend points out that Ofcom has estimated that some 2.3 million households will be close enough to mobile phone base stations using the 800 MHz spectrum to risk being affected by interference. That is an estimate, and the figure may be substantially lower. There are a number of reasons why that may be the case. First, Ofcom estimates that only 40% of those households will be viewing Freeview; the rest will be getting their television in other ways. That brings the figure to 900,000 homes.

My hon. Friend asks whether mobile operators will be compelled to put filters on their base stations. I am pleased to inform him that all the base stations being procured by potential winners of the 800 MHz licence will include a filter as a matter of course. Without wishing to confine myself to a specific figure, I have been informed that it is therefore likely that the new base stations, which are substantially more advanced than the ones used in other countries, may substantially reduce the number of households affected. When that becomes clearer, I will, of course, inform him.

My job as a Minister, working with Ofcom, was to work out the best way to reduce any interference for potentially affected households. First, the obvious decision was to put the mitigation measures into the hands of the mobile operators. They are the ones who will site the base stations and procure the relevant technology, so it seems sensible that, as the people potentially causing the interference, they are in charge of reducing that interference as much and as upstream as possible.

Secondly, I was given a range of financial support options that I could make available for mitigation. To put it bluntly, those options included zero and figures across the spectrum. I chose the higher end of the spectrum. I would rather be the Minister who set aside too much money for this programme than the Minister who set aside too little to get the job done.

How will the money be used? First, all the households that might be affected by the base stations will receive a free filter. So, on the current figure, 2.3 million households will receive a free filter. That means that, for the sake of argument, if a household receives the signal for the main television set in the living room through cable or satellite, it will receive a free filter for, say, a Freeview set in the bedroom. That will help many households that have second sets.

If we zone in, as it were, on the 900,000 households that use Freeview for their primary set, we estimate that some 150,000 of those households will be able to fit a filter without any problem. I have fitted a filter, and my hon. Friend has fitted a filter, which is literally a piece of aerial, to put it in layman’s terms. I simply unplugged the aerial, attached the filter and put the aerial back in. That took me 10 seconds, and I would not class myself as a DIY expert.

We are then left with 220,000 households that are technically vulnerable, which means people with disabilities or people aged over 75. I do not want to get into a secondary debate—I know many 75-year-olds who might not class themselves as vulnerable—but technically, they are vulnerable. That is about one in four of the 900,000 households, and help will be available to them should they so choose. We know from the digital switchover scheme that, of the people who were eligible for help, only 15% chose to make use of the available help scheme. Nevertheless, money will be set aside on the basis that every single one of those households will use the help scheme.

The next category is people with amplifiers, which are used to boost the power level of the TV signal. Before the switchover, amplifiers were quite prevalent because, obviously, people were using them to boost weak digital signals before we completed the switchover. Sometimes amplifiers are used to boost a strong signal where there are two or three televisions in a home. Ofcom estimates that some 380,000 of the affected Freeview homes have amplifiers, but many of those will no longer be in use and there will be no need to fit a filter. Where there is an amplifier, there is no reason why, in quite a significant number of cases, a normal able-bodied person will not be able to fit a filter. There has been a suggestion that, if the amplifier is in the loft, that could be a problem, but it should be possible to go into the loft to fit the aerial extension.

We acknowledge, however, that if the amplifier is on the roof, we certainly would not expect someone to get out the ladder and climb on the roof to fit the aerial. Ofcom estimates that there are some 125,000 households in that category and, as a result of the high-profile concerns that were raised on that specific issue, we have instructed that about £12 million of the £180 million be set aside to pay for the reasonable costs of professional installation. We have estimated those costs to be about £50 plus VAT. It is important to stress that by “professional installation” we mean going up a ladder safely and putting the aerial extension into an amplifier. That is not the same as adjusting an aerial for the digital terrestrial television switchover, which was a more complicated, technical task, but we expect people to use a registered digital installer. That is something that we inherited from the digital switchover scheme and will ensure that people are using professional installers.

Finally, there comes the issue of fitting filters to communal properties. We think there are about 20,000 such properties, which make up the rest of the 900,000 affected households. Those properties will require a more sophisticated filter, which we think will cost up to £300, but those filters will be provided to communal properties free of charge. Fitting such a filter is probably more demanding than fitting the filter that my hon. Friend and I have used, and we think a figure of about £220 is right. As a general rule, we would expect landlords to be responsible for ensuring the fitting of that filter to their property.

My hon. Friend says that he thinks people with second or third sets should get additional free filters. I am afraid that at this stage all I can do is agree to disagree with him. Additional filters will be easy to obtain and should cost £10 or less. It is difficult to give an open-ended commitment to provide free filters and to ask people to write in to say that they have two, three, four, five or six television sets, or to try to guess how many television sets they have. I think it is easier simply to give everyone a free filter and then say, “If you want a second filter, they are relatively cheap.”

I have also noted my hon. Friend’s suggestion for a pilot or trial period before rolling out 4G. There have been a number of technical trials already, and we have seen commercial roll-out in other countries, so we have a great deal of experience to draw on. We do not believe that a trial would add anything to our knowledge, and it would significantly delay much-anticipated 4G services. We will keep the matter under review, but it is important to explain again that 4G will roll out gradually; not all the country will be covered by services the minute 4G goes live in the 800 spectrum category.

I note my hon. Friend’s concerns about the lack of a public awareness campaign. Again, the mitigation programme is different from the digital switchover programme, because it does not affect every household in the country. Far fewer households will be affected. Also, every single household within range of a base station will get at least four weeks’ notice, and the roll-out process will take two to three years. We believe that embarking on a widespread publicity campaign at the moment might not have the impact that my hon. Friend suggests.

It is also important to stress that those who hold 800 MHz licences after the auction will have strict key performance indicators on the provision of public information as part of their licence conditions. Our final guarantee is that if any of the mobile network operators fails to meet the key performance indicators, the immediate sanction will be that they must switch off the offending base station and not add any others until they have remedied the issues for local TV viewers. That strikes me as an elegant and effective way of ensuring that mobile network operators take the issue seriously.

My hon. Friend is right to point out that because of our work in clearing the spectrum more quickly than we had anticipated, bringing the benefits of 4G to the UK more quickly than planned, we have a stretching timetable, but I am pleased that the mobile network operators moved quickly to set up the mitigation company, which has the elegant title of Digital Mobile Spectrum Limited and Andrew Pinder as its interim chair. The creation of the company has been at the heart of discussions with the MNOs about bringing forward the roll-out of services, and the MNOs are still required to have the mitigation company operational in time to launch services. I am confident that the MNOs are taking that requirement seriously. Furthermore, we will have oversight through an oversight board. I am delighted to tell my hon. Friend that the board had its first meeting this morning, and it was very productive.

Finally, let me address three points quickly; I am conscious that I might run out of time. My hon. Friend said that 38,500 people could be so seriously affected that no filter will help them. That figure may change over time as base stations become more sophisticated, but yes, we have made provisions for them to have a full platform change, or even a direct digital terrestrial television relay should one be required.

We note the concerns of the programme making and special events sector. I met with Lord Grade recently to hear its concerns. It is for Ofcom to deal with the PMSE sector and find suitable frequencies for it. It has a dedicated channel, channel 38, but we will keep the issue under review, and I promised Lord Grade that we would meet regularly.

Finally, my hon. Friend mentioned the long-term future of 700 MHz. We note concerns about the long-term future for spectrum as mobile phone demand increases, and we have an ambitious campaign to release public sector spectrum. There is, of course, an international dimension to the designation of the 700 MHz band, and we will undoubtedly continue to negotiate with our international partners about its future use, but I note absolutely my hon. Friend’s comments. It is important that we do not run before we can walk.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I do not think that there were any problems with transmission or reception during that debate, but I am afraid it is time to tune out and switch off.

Question put and agreed to.