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This report was commissioned by the Trust as part of its programme of value for money reviews into the Ö÷²¥´óÐã, following discussions with the National Audit Office.

The Ö÷²¥´óÐã uses significant amounts of spectrum to transmit both analogue and digital terrestrial television and radio services across the UK. The report provides analysis of future challenges and opportunities in respect of spectrum efficiency and will assist the Trust and the Ö÷²¥´óÐã in making informed decisions about the use of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's spectrum in the future. The Deloitte review looked at how efficiently and effectively the Ö÷²¥´óÐã uses spectrum in all areas, but its main focus was on Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) or Freeview.

Jeremy Peat, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Trustee, said:

"Freeview is now the most popular digital television platform and the Deloitte report gives significant credit for this to the Ö÷²¥´óÐã and its original investment strategy of providing a robust signal and picture quality. Indeed, Freeview's success has led to increased demand for capacity as the Ö÷²¥´óÐã and other broadcasters develop aspirations for new services such as HD Television. It is right that the Ö÷²¥´óÐã now explores new options to ensure that spectrum capacity is used as efficiently as possible and it is already doing this. In its early years, value for money was achieved by making Freeview available to as many licence fee payers as possible and now, five years after its launch, new technologies provide new opportunities to deliver even more value."

In respect of DTT, the Deloitte report notes that the Ö÷²¥´óÐã has so far prioritised encouraging consumer take up of Freeview by maximising the robustness of the signal and the picture quality. However, following the successful establishment of the platform and the recent growth in demand for spectrum, the report concludes that the Ö÷²¥´óÐã needs to reconsider the appropriate trade-off choices, and how the capacity can be used effectively for different competing service demands. It suggests that Ö÷²¥´óÐã management will need to be better prepared in the future to make more critical judgements around the use of capacity for individual services streams. This will require a more value-based process for making decisions relating to these capacity trade-offs.

The Deloitte report includes a response by the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Executive Board, which has been endorsed by the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Trust. The Executive outlines what plans are in place to make a number of technological improvements to increase the efficiency with which it uses spectrum, due to be implemented between 2008 and 2012. The Executive will also carry out consumer research on the picture quality of Ö÷²¥´óÐã services on DTT as recommended by the report. The Ö÷²¥´óÐã Executive is currently developing a framework to ensure a value-based approach to decisions on capacity trade-offs which will be presented to the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Trust in February 2008. The Ö÷²¥´óÐã is currently actively engaged with Ofcom on the latter's proposal for re-organising the DTT platform in order to accommodate HD television services within existing multiplex capacity.

Notes to editors

It is the responsibility of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Trust, under the Royal Charter, to ensure that value for money is achieved by the Ö÷²¥´óÐã through its spending of the licence fee. In order to fulfil this responsibility, the Trust commissions and publishes a series of independent value for money reviews each year in consultation with the Comptroller and Auditor General – the head of the NAO. The reviews are undertaken by the NAO or other external agencies, in this case Deloitte and Touch LLP.

The Trust has also today published another value for money report by the NAO on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's procurement.