Slashdot Mirror
Almost a Million UK Homes Will Suffer 4G TV interference
First time accepted submitter Nick Fel writes "As the UK nears the end of a lengthy digital TV switch-over, the sale of the analogue TV spectrum for 4G mobile phones will disrupt digital TV in almost a million homes. Affected homes will be issued with a filter or required to upgrade to satellite or cable, and in extreme cases may be granted funding to find their own solution."
The government isn't paying for this stuff, it is being paid for by the mobile phone companies.
sudo mod me up
As far as I am aware the only "cable company" over here is Virgin Media, who only service a limited area of the country (apparently it's available to 65% of households), most of which is confined to cities (and often there are areas of those cities where it is unavailable too). (Map of coverage) It's not even available in every city; I'm pretty sure that its not available anywhere in Aberdeen, which is the 27th most populous city in the UK (population ~200k), and I doubt its alone. Being in a sparely populated area and next to a motorway (the closest thing we have to freeways) is certainly not the only reason for not having cable access.
Satellite coverage on the other hand is pretty much 100%, line-of-sight issues notwithstanding. Trees aren't the only issues though. If someone lives in rented accommodation they may not be allowed to put up a dish, and even if they own it they may not have a south-east-facing area to mount a dish.
Certainly, I doubt there will be (m)any households that can't get satellite signals because of the LTE transmission, since satellite is transmitted at ~10-12 GHz while LTE is transmitted at 800, 1800 and 2600 MHz in Europe. Sure, the signal sent through the coax cable is within that range at ~970 MHz - 2 GHz, but if the LTE is strong enough to interfere with the cabling, fibre-optic connections are available and would likely be cheaper than getting fibre-optic cable TV installed in any of the non-covered areas.