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.