This month, transmitter company Teracom will conclude the DTT migration from the 700 MHz band.
On October 17, 2017 the 700 MHz band for mobile broadband (694-790 MHz) was made available in Southern Sweden (Helsingborg, Hörby, Malmö, Karlshamn, Karlskrona), except for the capital Stockholm, which changes frequencies on October 31, 2017, thereby concluding the migration.
As a consequence, the number of national MUXs is reduced from seven to six, where MUX-4 is discontinued and the MUX-5 switches from DVB-T to the DVB-T2 standard. The migration has be made region-by-region from north to south in a period of almost 18 months (March 2016 to October 2017).
“The consequence for us is that we get less frequencies to broadcast television. At the same time, we have over fifty programme services that are authorised to broadcast on the terrestrial network by 2020, says Håkan Axén, product manager for TV at Teracom. The company is now switching just one mux to DVB-T2.
DVB-T2 technology enables single-frequency (SFN) networks to be used in larger areas than DVB-T broadcast. This means that multiple masts in a nearby area can transmit at the same frequency, which in turn saves frequency.
In the original plan, the idea was to use DVB-T2 to a greater extent and provide the opportunity for a greatly increased range of HDTV channels. However, after consulting the broadcasters and Boxer, Teracom has developed a revised plan. The new plan will maintain existing HD programme services and further HD programme service may be due to the reduced migration to DVB-T2.
“The reasons for changing the plan are linked to the consumer perspective. The original migration plan was assumed that the penetration of recipients with DVB-T2 support would be significantly higher than it actually is today.”
