Portuguese consumers blast DTT quality
August 2, 2013
From Branislav Pekic in Rome
The Portuguese Association for Consumer Protection (Deco) says it received 3,500 complaints on the lack of quality of the DTT signal since February.
This figure represents an average of 583 complaints per month and the entity is urging users to complain in order to generate pressure for the restructuring of the existing DTT network.
Out of the total complaints that Deco has forwarded to Portugal Telecom and regulator Anacom, the operator has responded to 1,500. The most common problems are related to sound and image failures and in some cases even cause interruption of the broadcasts.
Deco considers that the transition to DTT was “badly prepared and with successive failures”, pointing out that the DTT network configuration in Portugal is one of the reasons for the poor performance. Namely, the reception of signals from different transmitters causes interference and leads to loss of viewing quality. The weather period that Portugal is facing and which is characterized by warmer and drier weather also represents a factor that contributes to the growing reception problems.
Portugal plans to upgrade DTT into a multi-frequency network with the goal of achieving greater quality of service.