Switchover to digital TV must be promoted, forum told

A DIGITAL "champion" needs to be appointed to ensure that the switchover from analogue to digital television is achieved as smoothly as possible, the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) national conference was told yesterday.

All televisions in the state will have to make the switch from analogue to digital by 2012 under EU rules. Already seven countries have made the switch, while the process is currently being rolled out in the UK.

The move is being made to free up radio frequencies in Europe which have become increasingly congested and also to make more space for the proliferation of new television channels.

The contract to provide digital terrestrial television (DTT) in Ireland was won by Boxer DTT, a consortium led by Denis O'Brien's Communicorp and Swedish digital television operator Boxer.

Boxer DTT chairwoman Lucy Gaffney said there was still a lack of public awareness of the changeover which will affect every person with a television set in the country.

She said that the Government should appoint an independent body to oversee the change in a similar manner to Digital UK, which has responsibility for ensuring the British public know what is involved. Digital UK is being funded out of BBC licence fees.

As of 2012, viewers who currently receive just an analogue signal (about one-fifth of all viewers) will have to get a set-top box to continue receiving television signals. All non-digital viewers will also have to buy the set-top box. "The promotion of digital switchover is absolutely key to early take-up. Our friends in the UK will back this up," said Ms Gaffney. "In fact, such was the importance of promotion that the UK went as far as to further increase the BBC's licence fee to make additional funding available specifically to promote digital switchover."

She said that it was now up to RTÉ, the BCI and the Government to begin the public awareness campaign to ensure everybody in the country is aware of the changeover. "We need a champion to ensure that information is available in every city, town and village in Ireland through community initiatives, trusted retailers and local installers," she said.

The roll-out of DTT is scheduled to begin next year and all analogue signals will be switched off on January 1st, 2012. Pricing arrangements have not been finalised. Funding models are being looked at which might involve giving the set-top boxes away with four terrestrial free-to-air channels, RTÉ1, Network 2, TV3 and Channel 4.

Proposals to include an Oireachtas channel and an Irish film channel as free-to-air are also being considered. Various packages will then be available to viewers starting from €9.99 a month with options including "pay as you go" and "plug and play".

Irish DTT will have 30 channels, considerably fewer than the number currently available to digital or cable subscribers.

However, the channels involved will be the 30 most-viewed at the moment and will include popular British channels such as BBC1 and 2 and Channel 4.