Ofcom Reveals Switchover Problems

A quarter of Freeview households in Wales and Northern Ireland – and a fifth in the Meridian and Anglia regions of England – will not have full access to the digital terrestrial TV channels after analogue switchoff, according to media regulator Ofcom.

The coverage of Freeview’s three commercial multiplexes – home to Five’s network of channels including Five US, Sky News, Dave and Virgin 1 among others – will reach just 73% of Wales and 75% of Northern Ireland from 2012, when switchover is completed, Ofcom said.

This is because of mountainous terrain interfering with terrestrial transmitter reception in some areas and the need to avoid the signal overlapping with the Republic of Ireland.

In England, the Anglia and Meridian regions will have 80% coverage, again because their signals could overlap with foreign territories, in this case France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

“There are simply not enough frequencies available to allow all the multiplexes to be available across the whole UK – we have to accept limitations in some areas, as do other countries,” Ofcom said in a switchover factsheet published today.

Overall, the coverage of Freeview’s commercial multiplexes is projected to be around 90% across the UK, with an average of 93% in England and 88% in Scotland.

There is much higher reach, 98.5% across the UK, for the three public service multiplexes, home to the 17 channels made up of BBC, ITV and Channel 4’s networks.

However, there is a regional divide here too, with just 97.5% coverage in Northern Ireland and 97.8% in Wales, compared to 98.8% in Scotland and 98.9% in England.

The regulator said: “It is particularly expensive to build networks that fully cover hilly and mountainous areas, as these need proportionally many more transmitters to cover the terrain effectively than is required in other parts of the country.”

Ofcom said it was a “commercial matter” for the commercial multiplex operators SDN and National Grid Wireless whether they rolled out their networks further into sparsely populated areas that rely on relay stations rather than the main TV transmitters.

Ofcom: 020 7981 3040 www.ofcom.org.uk