Digital Television and the future

In June 2009, after a delay (Feb-June), Barack Obama's administration enforced the analog shut off for all the full power stations in the USA, giving a closure to 60+ years of analog television history. The transition to digital made a huge step, although the USA was not the first one to shut off the analog TV signal (Germany and Andorra for instance, had already terminated it by that time), this date was a landmark in the DTTB's world transition.

Although there were 3 systems in those times to choose from (now there are 4, including the Chinese one), the predominant one in the world was DVB-T, with a largest number of countries , but the Japanese and Brazilian had developed their own system called ISDB-Tb and that was the one Peru chose in April 2009 to start the transition process. I was openly opposed to that decision because there was no possible economies of scale taking into account the fact that neither Japan nor Brazil shared both analog/digital television systems with Peru (Brazil was PAL-M in analog TV, and Japan was ISDB-T in digital TV, not compatible with Peru because we chose the Brazilian modifications), thus, the new TV sets with NTSC-M and ISDB-Tb tuners should be manufactured specially for Peru, a small market where there were 300K ATSC TV Sets sold and working.

The fact was that, shortly after, the first TV sets with both tuners arrived to Peru and were astonishingly costly (the most expensive marked US$8k) but the other fact is that after Peru, the domino effect started and almost every South American nation chose the same system., making such economy of scale possible.

Almost 14 years later, the nationwide implementation has not finished and the world has turned to other direction, forcing us to think about the future of "on air, linear, terrestrial" television, as we now know the television we always enjoyed in the past.

It's worth noting that Switzerland is about to discontinue over-the-air broadcasting in?DVB-T: this transition to "no digital" started in 2019, and the state-owned company terminated the digital broadcasting citing costs, rather than implement?DVB-T2.?

Will this be the trend in the next decades?

Transition to digital was difficult 14 years ago and now the world is forcing us to pay for contents with no option to free, open TV at no cost using the RF spectrum?

I believe the future of DTTB is still possible in South America, and speaking about our country, it's very difficult to move towards a full pay-TV future, when the FTA Television has not even reached the whole Peruvian population nowadays. Pay-TV companies only have 34% of households as clients and the remaining population either depend on FTA terrestrial television (analog or digital) or simply don't have television service in their areas. The state owned IRTP does not have relay stations in every single town in Peru, and the non-served areas rely on DTH systems that are, of course, pay-TV. We need to point that as in any telecommunication system, private investment has a limit and no private Television network in South America is willing to invest such an amount of money to cover 100% of any country. They didn't do it during the analog era, they will NOT do it in this digital future.

The solution I think of, is to cover the highest extent of the Peruvian population with DTTB and then cover the non served areas with an FTA satellite system in Ku-band (a social DTH), that could make it possible for any person to buy a 0.6m antenna, an FTA Set Top Box and point the antenna to a given satellite and receive the main national private and government contents from Lima. The cost of the system for the end user at current prices is no higher than US$50 plus installation, including STB and antenna, and that would mean that there is always a possibility, anywhere in Peru, to receive Digital FTA television, by any means, in the form of DTTB or DTH.

The Swiss example is very far away in the future for us, we will eventually arrive to it, but nobody knows what the future will be, so we can not predict anything. In 2009 everyone thought One-Seg and mobile digital TV were the future, and it proved wrong very quickly. That's why I think we should first devote to full coverage and then worry about the rest.