The Italian Council of State approved draft proposals earlier this week outlining details regarding steps mobile carriers will have to take to solve interference problems between the new LTE networks in the 800MHz band and digital television.
According to the ruling, three of the country’s primary mobile operators—Wind Telecomunicazioni, Vodafone and Telecom Italia—will be required to bear the full cost of installing filters to block LTE interference to television signals in affected households. Vodafone and Telecom Italia will each cover 25 percent of the total costs, while Wind Telecomunicazioni will cover 50 percent of the costs due to the close proximity between its frequencies and the frequencies used for digital television.
A similar solution was proposed in the UK late last year to alleviate interference expected to affect digital television with the implementation of 4G mobile services. Trial networks installed in Birmingham and London last month performed better than expected.
