Digital TV in Australia

David Heath
Wednesday, 09 July 2008 19:59

IT Policy - Regulation

The State-by-State distribution of digital reception was reasonably flat, varying between 37% in SA & QLD and 47% in ACT.  With one interesting exception.

Of all places, Tasmania has 64% of households able to receive digital TV.  Fortunately, the explanation was quite simple – Channel 10 is only available in digital.  The same reason was true for Mildura, where take-up was over 70%.

There has been a steady increase in adoption since the first survey in 2005, where only 13% of households were able to receive free-to-air digital TV.  Extrapolating this trend, it will take around 5 more years to achieve 100% saturation.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t take account of the nay-sayers – the people who will be on the phone to the ABC January 1st 2010 asking why the station has stopped transmitting!

There is a very simple solution to deal with this and it is already in use in (of all places) the US!  According to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration website every household in the US is eligible to request two $US40 tokens to purchase (or subsidise) two set-top boxes.  This is expected to have the majority of viewers ready for the switch-over on 17th February 2009.

Smart thinking.  Maybe Stephen Conroy will consider a similar scheme here.