Dan Sabbagh, Media Editor

Ed Richards, the new chief executive of Ofcom, ignored pleas from the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 to guarantee more spectrum for free high-definition television as he unveiled plans for an auction that could raise up to £10 billion.

The communications regulator instead announced proposals to auction off a valuable amount of broadcast spectrum — the first broadcast spectrum to become available for 45 years — prompting fears that it will be sold to wealthy phone companies with no interest in developing Freeview.

John Cresswell, ITV’s chief operating officer, said: “It is clear that the UK public expect a high-definition (HD) TV option whichever digital platform they choose. But the future of HD on the UK’s fastest- growing platform, Freeview, is far from guaranteed.”

Ofcom yesterday introduced what it called the “digital dividend review” — proposals for how it hopes to handle the windfall of broadcast spectrum that becomes available once television converts to digital between 2008 and 2012.

It is the first time that broadcast spectrum has become available since 1961, and the regulator estimated that the spectrum was worth between £5 billion and £10 billion over the next 20 years, although it insisted that these figures were not a prediction of what the spectrum might fetch at auction.

Free-to-air broadcasters wanted Ofcom to reserve some of the capacity between 470MHz and 862MHz for HD broadcasts on Freeview. Capacity on Freeview is at a premium and it will not be possible to broadcast much more than about five channels in high definition without forcing channels off the popular service.

John Clare, chief executive of DSG International, the owner of Dixons, said that Ofcom’s decision would leave Freeview at a disadvantage to cable and satellite: “The danger is that a significant proportion of the population will be left without access to high definition for decades to come.”

Freeview is key to the Government’s plans to achieving digital switchover. This week Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, announced plans to spend £600 milllion of licence fee money on funding free or cheap digital conversion for the elderly and disabled.

However, Mr Richards said that Ofcom was committed to an auction process because it was efficient. Setting aside spectrum for a particular purpose presumed “a level of insight, indeed omniscience, that we do not have”.

The newly available spectrum could still be used for HD Freeview, but broadcasters will have to contend with telephone companies interested in developing mobile television, broadband internet services, public safety radio and — although it is unclear if the spectrum allows this — simple voice telephony.

Ofcom’s new chief said that broadcasters had already secured the lion’s share of the old analogue spectrum for Freeview. “They’ve got 256 megahertz of 368 megahertz in the first place,” he said, adding that once the analogue signal was turned off it would provide space for a further ten standard definition channels, or three HD channels.

The regulator will consult on the plans before finalising them in the summer. Auctions will be held at the end of 2008.

Tuning in

470-862

Megahertz. The radio spectrum frequencies up for grabs

£10bn

Top estimate of the value to the economy over 20 years

256

Megahertz. The amount of spectrum already reserved for Freeview

2008

From when the spectrum will become available

Source: Ofcom