Just weeks away from digital switchover, Tauno Äijälä, head of Finland’s TV 2007 project group has warned that between 20,000 and 40,000 households will lose television reception on September 9 if they do not acquire a digital TV decoder or receiver.
It is estimated that at the end of July, 73% of households had upgraded to digital television. The majority who had yet to convert said they intended to purchase a decoder within the next few weeks. In homes reliant on a terrestrial antenna, 85% had converted, while in cable TV households the figure falls to 61%. The Finnish authorities recently granted the 1.2 million cable TV households a reprieve until February 2008.