Producers urged to lobby MPs over PMSE spectrum

Representatives of Save Our Sound UK attended a meeting at HM Treasury last week where they articulated the plight of the PMSE sector to Government officials.

During the conversation it was stated that Treasury and BIS (Department for Business Innovation and Skills) are trying to find a compensation scheme.

However, industry representatives are concerned that any scheme, when and if finalised, could eventually prove to be no more generous than the terms originally proposed by Ofcom.

The previous Government said that it would ensure that any compensation package should leave the PMSE sector ‘no better, no worse off’ as a result of the changes to spectrum access.

The new coalition administration has yet to commit to this.

Save Our Sound UK said: “On current evidence, Government would still appear to be sticking to the line that only Channel 69 capable equipment will qualify and that compensation levels will be based on residual value of equipment.

“The effect of this will be to exclude owners of equipment that does not tune to Channel 69 but will still be rendered redundant as a result of PMSE’s eviction from Channels 31-37 and 61-68. Additionally, owners of Channel 69 equipment would end up receiving a small fraction of the true value of their equipment.”

A decision could be made before the end of the month and Save Our Sound UK is urging supporters to contact their recently-elected MPs before then in order to highlight the issues and ask them to pursue a satisfactory outcome for the PMSE sector.

Radio spectrum is used during live and recorded programming by operators of wireless microphones.

The current PMSE spectrum is being sold off, resulting in the need to replace all affected equipment with gear that can operate on different frequencies.

More info is available a http://www.saveoursounduk.com/