Portugal invention extends cable TV coverage
January 17, 2014
From Branislav Pekic in Rome
Portugal Telecom, through its R&D unit PT Inovação, and the University of Aveiro are developing a solution that could substantially reduce the cost of cable TV services and extend their coverage to hundreds or thousands of kilometres.
The system, which is “simple, effective and ideal for large countries”, has been developed within the framework of the project “Digital RF Overlay”. It allows the full digitalisation of the radio frequency spectrum used by cable TV distribution systems (CATV), full-digital transmission over optical fibre and the reconstruction of the signal, without loss at the customer end of the network.
The “revolutionary” solution allows the transmission of TV signals to much longer distances without quality degradation, with the perspective, in the near future, of a significant improvement of the quality/cost of cable TV networks, as well as providing more customers with advanced interactivity features, such a those already offered by Portugal Telecom’s pay-TV unit Meo.