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Brit TV Won't Go Digital Till 2012
judgecorp writes "While the US switches off analog(ue) TV in 2009, it stays on in the UK till 2012, according to a timetable, the Digital Dividend Review released by the UK regulator Ofcom. And while the US taxpayer will fork out $3 billion, there's no mention of government subsidising the switchover in the UK - apart from the licence fee which Brits pay for the BBC, or course. The good news is that the 112 prime MHz of spectrum freed up will be used for wireless broadband, rural coverage for wireless services, and unlicensed spectrum for data. All things that will keep us so busy, we won't bother to watch TV, anyway."
In Sweden they've already started shutting down the analog networks. Phase one (the island of Gotland and towns of Gävle and Motala) just started a month ago.
It's proceeding stepwise but all analog transmitters should be completely off-line by Dec 13.
Of course, Swedes aren't quite as TV-addicted as USians. (IIRC the statistic is an average of about 2 hours a day vs 4.5)
Giving some of that "prime" 112Mhz of electromagnetic real-estate to
the Police, Fire, and Emergency response departments across this country.
Because, you know, they need it. But first, a short story.
HDTV first came to the United States partially as a ploy by the
broadcast companies in this country. Congress got together and suggested that
the public broadcast companies (CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, and even WB) weren't even
making use of 1% of the UHF broadcast television spectrum, and put forth the
crazy idea that some of these businessmen give up a resource that they didn't
even have plans to use.
Of course, the industry response is predictable. They launch a
lobbying and marketing campaign at full strength; the subject, HDTV. They
get all their cronies from Japan to put together all this neat-looking fancy
broadcast equipment and flat-screen high-definition televisions. They talk
about all the capabilities, the greater services they will be able to
offer the public through this new technology.
The catch? HDTV needs more bandwidth. Oh, by the way, we suddenly
have plans to use that UHF spectrum you were talking about. All of it. The
broadcast companies basically strong-arm congress by telling them that if the
public is thinking of taking "their" excess and unused bandwidth away, then
they won't have any way to bring this new HDTV stuff into the country. And
you know how Americans are about TV, and you especially know how American
Representatives are about Big Corproate Money (of which TV has *tons*).
Congress, of course, capitulated. They did, however, tell the
broadcast companies that they had a limited about of time to make the switch.
This, of course, was all the way back in the 80's. Since then,
we've heard more and more from the broadcast regime about how cool HDTV is
going to be, and how we're already making the technology better before
we've even deployed it, and how hard it is to implement a brand-new
nation-wide television standard, and how expensive the components have to
be because this is high-def afterall.
The FCC has delivered a deadline. Rescheduled that deadline, allowed
the industry to go past that deadline, and then reschedule again. Congress,
for the most part, has been pretty much unconcerned with this whole mess.
And the American public is as uneducated and clueless as ever.
The whole reason congress got together on this issue way back in the
80s is because Police, Fire and Emergency departments were starting to feel
the crunch of their own bandwith limitations. In order to operate as
efficiently as possible, these organizations were among the first to start
using digital packet radio networks to convey data to the field. They also
have other constraints as police forces get larger, and criminals become
more sophisticated. Adding even more to these problems is the fact that
many large American Cities have many large American Buildings that make it
more difficult to get a radio signal through.
All of this became disaterously apparent on 9/11. Police and Fire
response units even a SINGLE FLOOR away from each other found it impossible
to communicate using their current radio equipment. None of the ground units
were able to coordinate with the units actually in the building. No one
standing on the ground could even tell those people risking their lives about
the buildings imminent collapse, or to provide them with information that