Only about 3.5 million Mexican households, or 13.2 per cent of the total, have a digital television, complicating the transition from analogue to digital broadcasting, the Federal Telecommunications Commission of Mexico (Cofetel) has said.

The shift from analogue to digital television started in 2004 and was supposed to be completed in 2015 but has now been postponed for another year, said  Cofetel when unveiling of a new plan to speed the transition.

Mexico’s Digital Land Television programme, which uses the ATSC US standard, offers more signals to people living in densely populated cities, but more than 23 million households still have not converted their televisions to the new system, the federal agency said.

The Agency suggests that one way of dealing with the problem is to implement a “phased programme of local blackouts,” which includes a pilot programme in the cities of Tijuana and Tecate during 2012.

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