A number of telecom professionals from the Arab region as well as the global experts are taking part in the regional forum of The UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) and the first Arab meeting to co-ordinate Terrestrial Television channels in Dubai.

The event which concludes tomorrow (May 20) is being held in collaboration with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Arab League and the Arab States Broadcasting Union.

Majed El Mesmar, the deputy general manager of the telecommunications sector in TRA, welcomed broadcasting operators and official state representatives in the presence of Ibrahim Al Abed, the general manager of the National Media Council as well as media managers in the nation.

The forum focuses on the migration from analog terrestrial TV broadcasting to digital and the need for regional coordination and cooperation to make it happen.

It also discusses the technical and regulatory challenges of this migration in the Arab region in relation to the cost, deployment, return of investment, and radio frequency planning and sharing spectrum. In addition, participants reviewed technical requirements and necessary procedures to make amendments to the Geneve-06 terrestrial digital broadcasting service.

Al Mesmar pointed out that there were certain issues that the experts must not lose sight of and those include the band allocated for analogue Terrestrial TV Broadcasting which will no longer be protected after middle of June 17, 2015, and the reassignment of the 700 & 800 MHz bands that reduce the number of channels allocated for Digital Terrestrial TV Broadcast.

"In order to tackle these issues, we need to discuss and understand everything related to the migration from analogue to digital, the importance of the Digital Terrestrial TV Broadcast and the challenges of this migration in the Arab region in relation to cost, deployment and return of investments," he stated.

Agreeing on a unified Digital TV Receiver specification for the Arab region and the consensus among Arab countries to find and allocate the required additional channels that compensate the lost ones due to the reassignments of 700 & 800 MHz are also required to tackle these issues, added Al Mesmar.

The meeting also witnessed ITU’s radio sector technicians analyzing and making necessary technical accounts, depending on the program used in the RRC 2006 conference to determine the extent of the possibility to use the proposed frequencies.

Tarek Al Owady, the executive director of Spectrum Management and international affairs in the UAE, said the digital terrestrial television broadcasting offers many advantages that exceeds traditional analogue.

"This includes high quality picture and sound, efficient use of the frequency spectrum, high mobility, multi-channel and broadcast media, in addition to better reception of broadcast signals, which also features low cost compared with the broadcast satellite broadcasting," he added.-TradeArabia News Service