ANACOM hosted a workshop on Digital Dividend: Market Challenges and Public Interest Goals, to be held at Centro Cultural de Belém, in Lisbon, on 16 April 2009. Further information and details can be found here.

The digital dividend can be described as the spectrum over and above the frequencies required to support existing broadcasting services in a fully digital environment, including current public service obligations.

It must also be seen in the wider context of the overall balance between supply and demand for radio spectrum. This is a persistently scarce public resource for which there is an ever growing demand in modern society: it underpins every type of wireless service from professional use such as radio-navigation, satellite systems or radar to consumer applications like broadcasting or fixed and mobile communications. This essential role of radio spectrum as an enabler for growth was also recognised in the i2010 initiative, as a way to accelerate the economic dividends of the digital convergence.

Since allocation of the digital dividend is a national prerogative, meaning that Member States of the European Union are entitled to manage the freed up spectrum according to their national interests, provided that they are in line with decisions taken within the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), it is so important that administrations and regulators support the public interest by ensuring this spectrum is put to the best social and economic use.

ANACOM has organised this workshop as a catalyst to the public consultation on the digital dividend, as a way of gauging the trends and interest of the market in the frequencies which will result from the migration process from the analogue system to digital, also constituting a encouragement for participation in this consultation.

For more information, please the background texthttp://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=870239 and the consultation page Digital Dividend - consultation launched on 30.3.2009http://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=894321.