Crown Castle Puts New Freeview Channel Up For Grabs

A new channel has been made available on digital TV service Freeview, by mobile telecommunication and broadcast transmission infrastructure company Crown Castle.

The company is taking sealed bids from interested parties up to the 31 January, with broadcasting expected to start as early as 1 April this year. The initial contract term will be for 12 months, with the channel available for up to 18 hours per day, operating as a free-to-air-service.

Crown Castle said that the broadcast space had become available due to technology improvements and advances in compression technology, thus reducing the bandwidth required to transmit TV channels. The company stated that it was now possible to squeeze in the new channel alongside the existing 31 services.

Crown Castle said that a number of broadcasters had expressed interest in bandwidth on Freeview, should it become available. A spokesman for the company said: “We have had expressions of interest in the past and we’ve already sent out requests for proposals to them.”

This Christmas saw record numbers of Freeview receivers sold, pushing the number of Freeview-equipped households up to the five million mark and delivering extra channels to at least one million more homes than at the same point last year, according to initial sales figures.

According to estimates from the BBC, 1.5m digital terrestrial set top boxes and integrated TV sets were sold in the three months to 25 December. While in each of the two weeks before Christmas a record 190,000 sets and set-top-boxes were bought, comfortably beating Christmas 2003’s best of 140,000 in one week (see Christmas Shoppers Push Freeview Into Five Million Homes).

Freeview: 08708 80 99 80 www.freeview.co.uk

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