Teracom exorcises ‘ghost’ multiplex

Swedish transmission company Teracom has commenced work on the construction of the country’s sixth digital terrestrial multiplex with channels that have been licensed to use the platform since January 2009 potentially going live before the end of the year.

Investment in Multiplex 6 ceased last October without the network being built after Teracom argued that price regulation proposed by PTS was unworkable.

Magnus Larsson, director-general of the Radio and TV Authority RTVV said he was grateful that the network was now being built and broadcasts would commence.

Through no fault of their own channels including Discovery, Disney XD, National Geographic and BBC World News found themselves in breach of their licence conditions because they were required to broadcast on a network that didn’t exist.

Teracom CEO Crister Fritzson said a new pricing model had been proposed a new structure that makes investment possible. “We’ll now begin the development of mux 6, something we have planned for a long time and that is very important to give television viewers more channels and thereby strengthen the competitiveness of terrestrial network”.

Multiplex 6 would be the first terrestrial multiplex in Sweden to use MPEG-4 compression. Since April 2008, platform operator and Teracom subsidiary, Boxer has no longer been accepting MPEG-2 boxes for test and approval. The MPEG-4 technology is backwards compatible, meaning that subscribers using the new MPEG-4 receivers will also be able to watch the existing MPEG-2 channels.