IBC 2009 – Amsterdam. Nine of Western Europe’s leading cable operators have chosen to adopt the new DVB-C2 standard. Between them, the operators represent over 22 million households.
The Geneva-based standards organisation had told delegates to its DVB World conference in March that seven operators were looking to move to the new system. However, this is the first time that any of their names have been made public.
The nine operators concerned are Kabel Baden Württemberg, Unitymedia, Kabel Deutschland (Germany), Ziggo (the Netherlands), ONO (Spain), Com Hem (Sweden), Numericable (France), YouSee (Denmark) and ZON (Portugal).
Between them, the majority of Europe’s leading cable operators are included, with the exception of Virgin Media (UK), Canal Digital (Scandinavia) and UPC (Multiple territories).
While able to make significant bandwidth savings DVB-C2 is, unlike the other next generation systems under development, not backwards compatible.