Digital terrestrial TV plan is best abandoned

GIVEN the recent pullout by the consortium licensed to provide a digital terrestrial TV service here this year – as you reported (April 21) – the Government should take the opportunity to abandon such plans altogether.

Only a few hundred thousand households are not connected to cable/satellite reception and nearly all households have fixed-line telephone connection capability. Such uses, including handing out satellite dishes in 2012, if needed, are cheaper than rolling out and maintaining the suggested digital TV network which, unlike cable/satellite transmission, cannot effectively deliver and compete with coming high definition TV (HDTV) or 3D-TV formats because the capacity isn’t there.

This is also about effective resource management. Terrestrial frequencies are ideal for mobile and interactive communication, a mobility not needed when watching TV in a living room, particularly HDTV which needs big screens to be enjoyed. Mobile internet broadband, including its digital TV rollout to DVB-H or similar standard, is terrestrial TV by another name anyway, complementing and not just copying what standard use of satellite/cable can achieve. It was a lack of frequencies that forced mobile telephony into using the microwaves of today, with poor reach, expensive distribution and health hazards.

Now, as analogue TV broadcasts finish, safer frequencies of good reach and cheaper distribution are freed up to begin a new era of mobile communication for Irish people.

Moreover, by choosing not to block big chunks of available frequencies with old-style, analogue-copying TV that also forces people to purchase “converter boxes” of no future relevance, Ireland can be a world leader in mobile communication and content development, given already existing technological expertise in mobile and broadband communication and the fact that the country is relatively isolated in terms of frequency interference.

Let’s, for once, think ahead on this island.

Peter Thornes

Erne Street

Dublin 2