This was reported by Jeroen Stessen already. It says here that over the freed-up spectrum previously used by PAL TV, only some public service broadcasts are carried free, and that the rest is pay TV that competes with cable. I suppose that does not imply that the DTT previously on the air had to be all pay-TV, but from what Jeroen said before, that's mostly the case. Under these circumstances, it seems easy to understand why 95 percent of viewers subscribe to cable. Even more than in Germany before analog shutoff. Maybe KPN should try to offer FOTA TV in its terrestrial system. That might be successful enough to retain use of that spectrum beyond 2017. Seemed to work in the UK, and it also seems to have boosted OTA viewership in Germany. (And maybe here too, as we discussed last week.) Bert ---------------------------------------- http://www.dtg.org.uk/news/news.php?class=countries&subclass=0&id=2120 Netherlands switches off analogue TV Champagne corks were popping in Amsterdam last night as Dutch telco KPN switched off analogue television transmitters in the Netherlands, making it the first country to fully liberate the analogue TV spectrum for new digital services. Though the switch is a landmark in the global transition to digital-only broadcasting, few households in the country will have noticed: only 74,000 homes relied exclusively on analogue TV in a nation in which cable serves TV to 95% of the population. KPN has a licence to use the liberated spectrum for digital TV broadcasts until 2017. Under its licence it has had to invest in a new digital terrestrial broadcasting infrastructure, and must carry public service broadcast channels free of charge in return for access to the rest of the spectrum, which is being used to offer pay-TV channels that compete with cable. KPN switched off analogue transmitters shortly after midnight. "Then we broke out the champagne," said a KPN spokesman. Though analogue TV signals are being switched off, the move does not mean the Netherlands is fully digital: much of the country's cable TV is still delivered via analogue cable networks. Lovelace Consulting 12.12.2006 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.