Five European countries failed to meet the December 2012 deadline for the transfer of terrestrial broadcasting to the digital format.
Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, and the United Kingdom all completed the process in 2012, meaning that 22 EU member states hit the recommended deadline, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory.
Croatia, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland have also already completed analogue switch-off (ASO) bringing the total to 26 countries out of the 39 Member States monitored by the European Audiovisual Observatory which have completed the transition.
Switch-off should be complete in Greece, Poland and Bulgaria in 2013 and Hungary should switch-off in 2013 or 2014 (along with the “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” and Bosnia and Herzegovina). Albania, Romania, Russia, Montenegro and Turkey have planned to complete the process in 2015.
All of the countries will fall within the June 2015 deadline of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) GE-06 agreement.
The observatory says there is an increasing availability of high definition services (HDTV) on DTT platforms. Whereas at the end of 2009, HDTV was only available in two countries (France and the United Kingdom), at the end of 2012 there were HD channels on the DTT platforms in 22 European countries offering a combined total of more than 90 national DTT channels and 25 regional windows. Six new free-to-air HD channels were launched in France at the end of 2012.
