News.blog: Dutch TV goes digital

The Netherlands on Tuesday became the first country in the world to eliminate analogue television signals altogether and switch to digital.

But it was a largely silent shift, according to a report from the Associated Press, because 94 per cent of the Netherlands' 16 million residents already subscribed to cable TV and probably didn't even notice.

The Dutch government has handed the bandwidth freed up by the analogue switch-off over to Royal KPN NV, a formerly state-owned corporation that had a telecommunications monopoly over the country, for use in digital broadcasting. In return, Royal KPN, which now competes with other digital cable companies in the Netherlands, has footed the bill for the construction of digital cable masts and has agreed to offer a number of government-sponsored and public-broadcast channels free of charge.

There are a handful of other countries aiming to pull the plug on analogue TV soon: Belgium and some Scandinavian nations hope to do so next year, Japan has set the date for 2011 and the UK plans to switchover across the country, on a regional basis, from 2008 to 2012. The US has 2009 pencilled in, but with 21 million households still relying on over-the-air TV signals, there could be a few roadblocks.