WITH cable group NTL poised to buy Virgin Mobile and satellite broadcaster Sky soon to take over internet group Easynet, the age of convergence between the media, communication and broadcasting industries is unarguably with us.
The lines that once divided businesses in these sectors have become blurred as technological advances mean that consumers now pay their mobile phone networks or digital TV stations for internet access, while the telecoms group BT moves into televisio
n content.
Whether Scotland is keeping pace with these rapid changes is debatable. But a survey due out from Ofcom in the spring should give a clearer picture of what is happening in the digital age north of the Border. The UK communications and broadcasting regulator has spent six months studying how easily the internet, mobile phone networks, digital television and radio can be accessed in different parts of the country, along with what technology is being used to do so.
In Scotland, the watchdog is studying areas including the extent to which remote Highland communities can and do access the web and whether people in the Borders are converting to digital TV ahead of the phased switch-off of the analogue signal between 2008 and 2012.
Vicki Nash, director of Ofcom Scotland, says: "This is a piece of work that's very important. How well connected are all of the regions? And what does it mean if they are not connected?
"It will provide a clear picture for us as a regulator as to what, if anything, we are going to do about it. We will take a hard look at the findings and discuss it with businesses, the Scottish Executive and enterprise agencies."
The publication will coincide with the release of another Ofcom study into media literacy, which Nash said will look at "the extent to which people are able to access technology and be creative".
Despite efforts by the Executive as well as by businesses to promote the importance of technologies such as broadband, concerns persist that Scotland is falling behind the rest of the UK.
Nash says she does not want to pre-empt the findings of the studies, but says it is clear that Scotland is ahead of the UK in take-up in some areas and behind in others.
"If you look at some existing technologies - digital TV for instance - accessibility is higher [in Scotland]. It's 75% in the UK, and 82% in Scotland, and that's because of concentration in the Central Belt."
Nash says the Executive wants to better understand how convergence of services will impact on cultural and social trends as well as on economic and skills development. But she believes the Executive could do more.
"The Executive is minded to take further evidence. They are starting to think about it. Other organisations are starting to get to grips with convergence.
"There have been a number of meetings with the Executive, but what we would welcome is proactive engagement which is joined up. It's quite critical for Scotland in terms of the economy and also for citizen-consumers. What we would like to see is engagement with the bigger picture."
Ofcom replaced the five regulatory bodies - Oftel, the Independent Television Commission, the Radio Authority, the Radio Communications Agency and the Broadcasting Standards Committee - when it was formed in December 2003 and has had mixed fortunes.
The formation of the regulator was met with a degree of scepticism over its annual £164m taxpayer-funded budget, its glitzy central London HQ and a feeling that it may prove to be a watchdog with more bark than bite.
It has since produced a stream of surveys - some well received and some highly controversial - including a review last year of public service broadcasting (PSB).
This paved the way for ITV and the SMG-owned stations, STV and Grampian, to scale back the amount of regional news programming they have to produce under the terms of their charters.
In December, SMG said changes to the PSB requirement was partly the reason for its decision to axe 55 jobs at Scottish TV in Glasgow and four at Grampian TV in Aberdeen.
Despite this, Nash says Ofcom is committed to preserving regional programming and that a review of the TV production sector - also being published in the spring - could lead to penalties for any broadcasters who are not keeping to their quotas of buying content produced outside London.
Ofcom Scotland is now hard at work on plans for a digital Gaelic TV channel. The station, which is expected to be launched in January 2007 with a budget of between £13m and £16m, will broadcast one and a half hours of original content daily, with the remainder of the programming using repeats.
The Gaelic Media Service is putting in £8.5m, SMG £1.5m over three years, and the BBC £2.1m. The Scottish Executive and the Department of Media, Culture and Sport will also contribute funds.
Nash says: "The station is under discussion. The digital switchover will make a lot of difference, and that's why we want to get it up and running before that happens."
This year, Ofcom is likely to be kept busy with two main subjects: the BBC's long-awaited charter review and the build-up to the digital switchover, which will lead to fresh issues that need to be addressed - including what to do with the so-called "digital dividend", or spectrum, that will be freed when the analogue signal is switched off.
This spectrum is likely to be highly sought after by mobile operators and wireless broadband providers, which are rapidly expanding and want the extra bandwidth to provide improved content services.
It has been suggested that if it was auctioned, the spectrum could be worth up to £1.5bn for the government, and observers believe it is unlikely that Westminster would not seek to sell it to the highest bidder.
Nash says it has not yet been decided whether this will happen, but she suggests that some of it could be used to provide better broadband services in remote parts of Scotland.
