Bottleneck in DTT antennaization?

Impulsa DTT warns in its latest report about the possibility of a bottleneck in the antennaization process before the imminent arrival of the analogue switch-off. With less than two months to go before the blackout, 240,000 buildings are still pending adaptation.

There are less than two months left for television in Spain to complete one of the most complex migratory processes in history: the change in the distribution of the audiovisual signal that will be broadcast only with digital terrestrial technology. One of the aspects that most worries Impulsa DTT, and which it highlights in its latest report, is the possibility that before the imminent arrival of the blackout there could be a bottleneck in antennaization.

The information from the FENITEL panel for the last quarter of 2009 indicates that in the last three months of last year, 32,129 interventions were carried out on community antennas to adapt them to the correct reception of DTT broadcasts. With this, 2009 closes with a total of 848,240 adapted buildings, to which must be added another 160,183 buildings built after the ICT standard of 2008 that, in general, do not require any additional work on the installation of antennas and that, therefore, are also prepared to receive DTT.

Thus, linking adapted and newly built buildings, more than one million antennas are ready for DTT, which represents approximately 80.5% of the total universe of housing blocks in the country. According to the study's panel, there are about 240,000 buildings pending adaptation, that is, the remaining fifth.

Despite the proximity of the switch-off, during the last four months of 2009 there was a slowdown in the rate of installations, which could be explained by the fact that the buildings pending antennation are the most complicated from a technical point of view, and from the decision-making point of view by the communities of residents. In fact, more than 30% of the interventions carried out during the last quarter have required a complete modernization of the cabling
Even so, during the 2009 financial year, FENITEL installers have operated on 155,447 buildings and have increased the percentage of buildings prepared for DTT by 15 points.

DTT penetration

The percentage of Spanish households with DTT operational in January 2010 amounted to 80.8%, according to information from the Kantar Media audiometer panel (TNS Sofres until now). This figure is 3.4 points higher than that recorded in December 2009. Thus, in the last mobile year, a third of Spanish households (33.5%) have joined DTT.

By Communities, Aragon, Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands exceed the 85% barrier in this indicator. In the case of the Balearic Islands, its incorporation into the leading group by reaching fourth place comes after a notable monthly jump of 11 percentage points, due to the analogue switch-off carried out in Mallorca in January 2010.

In addition to this exceptional leap, other Communities have also stood out in the consolidation of new technology. Thus, Galicia embodies the second great leap in growth with 5.6 percentage points more than in December. Castilla La Mancha has also registered notable progress in recent months and begins February with more than 79% of its homes adapted, after an increase of 4.7 percentage points.

Record sales in tuners

In December 2009, according to the latest report by Impulsa TDT, the combination of advertising campaigns, the increase in domestic consumption characteristic of the Christmas period and the imminence of analogue switching off throughout the country, caused sales of DTT tuners to reach the figure of 1,358,000 units. Never before had such a volume been reached.

With this extraordinary result, 2009 closed with more than 25.5 million digital tuners purchased since the beginning of the transition process. We recall that this panel includes the equipment distributed by the sales channels to the final consumer in the peninsula, excluding direct sales from manufacturers and other distribution channels, as well as equipment acquired in the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla.

The exceptional sales figures for December have been given both in the equipment with integrated DTT and in the external decoders. In the first case, 792,000 units were sold, a figure that we had only approached in January 2009 with 759,000. Within this typology, televisions with built-in DTT continue to be the product most demanded by citizens. In December, 571,240 televisions with DTT reception were sold, which represents more than 42% of the total demand for digital equipment in the month.

In the case of external tuners, they accumulated 566,000 new sales in December. Previously, in July 2009 alone, the figure of half a million devices of this class had been exceeded. Sales of all types of DTT decoders (zappers, with MHP, with hard disk and with two tuners) have been increasing especially since 2009, when their average sales rate has multiplied by 1.8. Specifically, in the month of January the increase registered in relation to December 2009 was 90%. This acceleration could be attributed to last-minute acquisitions to deal with the necessary digital adaptation of non-main televisions in homes and televisions in second homes in the face of the real arrival of analogue broadcast cessations. The significant reduction in the prices of this equipment in December - with an average cost of 31.9 euros, 14% less than in the previous month - has also favoured the increase in sales.

Audiences

Kantar Media's panel of audiometers reveals that DTT broadcasts reached a screen share of 56.5% in January 2010, a new mark that is set after a monthly increase of 3.7 points, similar to the one experienced in December. If the most recent result is compared with that of January 2009, DTT's share has multiplied by 2.4 in the space of one year.

The use of DTT in January stands at 147 average minutes per person per day, which grows to 182 minutes when only people who already have DTT at home are considered.

Aragon, with a screen share of 65.1%, the Canary Islands, with 62.8%, and Catalonia, where DTT consumption is already 64.0%, remain at the top of the ranking of Communities with DTT shares above 60%. In January, the Balearic Islands reached 65.3% of DTT's share of the screen, joining the previous ones after a very significant monthly increase (11 percentage points).

2010 begins its unstoppable journey towards the imminent total digitalisation of Spain with a very significant fact: for the first time the share of the screen of analogue television falls to 21.3%, below the set of multichannel platforms other than DTT that account for 22.2% (of which 20.6 share points belong to payment options).

In January 2010, national channels broadcasting in simulcast obtained a net total of 35.8 points of share on DTT, after a significant monthly increase of 3.2 points. This circumstance has limited the growth of thematic channels broadcasting on DTT, which still increase their monthly share by one tenth and now stand at 10.4% of the total television audience.

Final phase

As stated in the National Transition Plan itself, "terrestrial television broadcasts with analogue technology with state or regional coverage will cease before 3 April 2010." In order not to generate incidents during the Easter holidays, the definitive date for the final cessation of analogue broadcasts in Spain has been set for 30 March. Since February 10, the titling of analogue broadcasts has begun in all the municipalities included in the pending Technical Projects, which become part of Phase III stipulated by the PNT. The inclusion of these informative signs on the cessation of analogue broadcasts is an action that the public and private channels, both national and regional, have launched under the coordination of the National Office for the Transition to DTT in each of the previous phases of the digitalisation process and whose broadcast is scheduled sufficiently in advance so that citizens can prepare.

Spain will meet its challenge without having a previous experience, and in a process that has affected both the industry and viewers. Thus, before April 3, all of Spain will be DTT and will join other territories that have already completed the process, reaching ninth place in Europe (after the shutdowns in Luxembourg, Holland, Finland, Sweden, Andorra, Switzerland, Germany and Denmark) and in tenth place if we take into account the USA.

In terms of coverage, it has already far exceeded the obligations established by the SOP. Thus, the Spanish global network (RGE) is already at 98.35% of the population, above its obligation established by the SOP that placed it at 98%. In addition, the SFN (Single Frequency Network), which corresponds to the coverage of all private operators, is 1.61 percentage points above its obligations (96% of the population).

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