The international French language broadcaster TV5 Monde has given up analogue distribution in The Netherlands. Ziggo, the country’s largest operator with 3.2 million connected homes, has announced it will stop analogue carriage of the channel and relocate it to basic digital.
The move is part of a scheme to bring down the number of basic analogue channels to 30 across the Ziggo network in order to make more room for digital television and other services. At the moment Ziggo has 1.1 million digital homes and the number is growing.
Last year, the number two operator in the country, UPC, removed TV5 Monde from both its analogue and digital tiers, citing disagreement about the conditions of carriage of the channel. The channel remains freely available on satellite as an FTA service on Astra and Eutelsat Hotbird.
