Sweden’s digital TV network was briefly taken off the air on Wednesday afternoon after an equipment failure in the central part of the system. Service was lost between 15:30 and 15:47, when engineers from the transmission company Teracom were able to restore the signal. Up to one million of Sweden’s 4.2 million households were affected by the fault.
A spokeswoman for Teracom told Broadband TV News that the outage was exceptional. “Usually we have a very high percentage of distribution, so we take this situation very seriously,” she said.
On Monday the latest phase of Sweden’s digital switchover took place when some 200 transmitters in Västernorrland and Jämtland were moved to digital only transmissions. The process involved over 160 engineers.
Sweden is one of the leaders in Europe’s digital switchover and has already shutdown around 50% of its analogue network. The process is due to be completed by November.
