Interim Fiji govt revokes broadcast licenses

Updated November 23, 2009 10:08:49

Fiji's interim government has revoked all of the country's broadcasting licenses and since Saturday all television and radio stations have been given a temporary license. The interim Attorney-General and Communications Minister, Aiyez Sayed-Khaiyum, will decide now which of the licenses will be renewed. The government says that the move has nothing to do with freedom of expression.

However both Australia and New Zealand's governments have condemned the move, with New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully describing it as "a step backwards". Radio Australia is already banned and off-air in Fiji through its terrestrial radio network and FM stations.

Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speaker: John Westland, Radio Australia's Manager of Rebroadcasts


WESTLAND: As far as we know the rationale of the Fiji government or the Fiji authorities have given is that they want to rationalise the spectrum use. They've taken control of all of the spectrum which contains any telecommunications systems or any broadcasting systems at all, which is from 30 hertz to 300 gigahertz. That covers almost every means and mode of terrestrial communication. Now the understanding was, and the understanding that I have, although it's quite limited, is that it's all to do with rationalising and trying to get the best value out of the spectrum. However that's what's been said but simply taking back everybody's license and issuing temporary licenses seems to be a very heavy-handed way of going through an administrative process.

COUTTS: Australia if I remember correctly did something similar on its AM band because all the radio stations were bunched up one end so they gave them new call signs and spread them out over the spectrum. Is that, do you think, what's behind this?

WESTLAND: Look that could be but I mean our experience . . . Radio Australia's got experience in dealing in national broadcasting systems from Southeast Asia all the way through the Pacific, and I would have said from our experience that the Fiji spectrum is actually relatively well managed. The radio stations are quite well spaced, there is minimal interference in the manner that we experience quite severely in other parts of Southeast Asia where the airwaves are very crowded and people are colliding with each other all the time. However in Fiji it's not the case at all, and I think there are probably better and I think less heavy-handed ways of going about and rearranging your spectrum.

COUTTS: What would be your suggestion?

WESTLAND: Well you can simply ask people to move. You don't actually have to take away somebody's license to have them reallocated a piece of spectrum. I think the really difficult thing that we see here is that people have their licenses revoked and have been issued with temporary licenses. Now you can have people broadcasting on their existing license but simply say that at some point in the future everybody is going to move, [they] might be moved just a couple of points along the dial, but you don't have to take away somebody's license to do that.

COUTTS: And Mr Sayed-Khaiyum has already said that some will get their licenses back, so you'd have to question that in this situation.

WESTLAND: Well I think that's where a lot of the speculation is arising is that is it less of an issue about spectrum but more an issue about who in fact actually gets a license to operate. And as long as there's as little information about the whole exercise as there is, that speculation will continue.

COUTTS: We've already touched on this a little John but I just want to go back over it again, but Sayed-Khaiyum says the country's broadcast spectrum has been allocated in a disorganised and inefficient and ad hoc fashion. Does that suggest that there'll be new players in this? That there'd be some outside services coming in and that they'll get the best frequencies?

WESTLAND: Well look once you wipe the slate clean it clearly gives people an opportunity to do anything as they choose. I mean all spectrums develop over time. Not all radio stations start from day one, and as a consequence licenses are allocated as new players come into the market. And if that's what they mean ad hoc then that's what happens everywhere around the world. However in Fiji's situation what they're trying to do, what it seems that they're trying to do now, is start from almost at year zero and saying ok well look we have this spectrum and now we're proposing to allocate it. There's two things that can come out of that, it can either open it up to new players, it can shut off existing players. They can put a price tag on the licenses which happens for example in Australia where the spectrum is actually auctioned and the player with the most amount of money can win. Frankly as long as there's as little detail as there is at the moment, we just don't know.