Goals
The HELP Interferences service supports citizens experiencing bad reception of digital TV signals, helping them check whether they are caused by LTE interference, and helping them solve their problems.
Impact
Help Interferences is the institutional assistance service that:
- Receives the claims form from citizens complaining of bad digital TV signal reception, by means of a telephone call to a toll-free number (800 126 126) or by filling out a digital module at the www.helpinterferenze.it web site.
- Verifies the actual impact of the LTE emission on the DTV signal.
- Activates a free-of-charge intervention on the citizen reception antenna.
The management and the execution of the Help Interferences service is carried out by the Fondazione Ugo Bordoni, an independent third party acting under the supervision of the Ministry of Economic Development.
Description
Help Interferences is an assistance service that supports citizens who experience interference with LTE and DTV signals. LTE technology is the basis for 4th generation mobile telephony services (4G) enabling a superfast Internet connection for smartphones and tablets. The Ministry of Economic Development established a Technical Round Table to allow the proper development of the 4G LET service using 800MHz band, taking into account any LTE-DVB-T interference, with the participation of the FUB and those Mobile Telephony Operators that acquired the right to operate in the 800 MHz band.
The Technical Round Table dealt with problems related to radio interference, the assessment of the impact of bad reception of users’ TV signals, the definition of the actions and procedures required to solve the interference problems.
In 2013, the Ministry of Economic Development issued a Regulation including the measures and intervention procedures that Mobile Operators must apply to minimize interference with wideband mobile services and digital terrestrial TV reception at home, in compliance the Ministerial Decree of 9 August 2013, no.165, published in the Official Gazette of the Italian Republic no. 44, 22 February 2014.
This Regulation laid down that the Mobile Operators should assign to the FUB, an independent third party acting under the supervision of the Ministry of Economic Development, the role of “Manager” of the LTE interference mitigation service and that the Ministry should make use of the technical, scientific, operational, logistic and communication assistance of the FUB in identifying and evaluating the suitable techniques of the interference mitigations, in line with current national and international standards, methods and best practices.
The FUB management activities of the Help Interference assistance service were laid down in two distinct agreement documents, separately agreed between the Mobile Operators and the Ministry.
The FUB, as Manager, also conducts communication campaigns for citizens to inform them about how to use the Help Interference service, by deploying social network and email campaigns aimed at the municipal administrations in the areas affected by LTE interference.