Spain’s DTT retune lagging behind
February 20, 2015
From David Del Valle in Madrid
Despite an extended deadline of March 31st to retune DTT aerials, 40 per cent of Spanish buildings have yet to carry out the necessary modification.
Broadcasters, DTT installers, users and the industry have raised their concerns about the possibility of not meeting the deadline and risking a widespread DTT blackout in the country.
By the end of January, over 2.5 million homes, representing 354,351 buildings, had not reset the aerials out of the total 842,507 buildings obliged to do so following the so-called digital dividend and the migration of TV broadcasters to another frequency band.
The Administration and the industry have urged Spaniards to retune aerials to avoid a possible blackout from March 31st. In December 2014, the Government extended the DTT retuning deadline from January to March to complete the digital migration and prevent between 2 and 4 million Spaniards from losing their TV signals, but it seems that the process is going very slowly with many parts of Spain running the risk of a DTT blackout.
To meet the deadline, it is estimated that installers will now have to adapt around 6,000 aerials per day to be on time.