Media regulator OfCom have admitted that 10% of the population will never receive the whole of the Freeview digital TV service - well, not unless terrestrial digital TV technology improves at some point.
The Freeview service consists of six 'bundles', three for public service broadcasting, three for commercial broadcasting. Viewers who receive all the channels available wouldn't notice the difference, but 25% of the country can't currently access those channels carried by the commercial bundles. Even when analogue TV signals are finally turned off (they're still aiming for 2012 for that, somewhat optimistically me thinks) and the digital signals are increased in power (currently they run on lower than ideal power so as not to interfere with analogue signals) only 90% of the population will receive those commercial bundles, because it is just not commercially viable for the companies operating them to reach the remaining 10%.
Confirming that would be the case, John Steel of Digital UK, the organisation coordinating the move over to digital TV, said last week: "It's a commercial decision for the non-public service broadcasters. Using 80 transmitters they can reach about 90% of UK households but to get the extra few per cent they would need to access nearly 1,000 extra transmitters. It's still a big step forward for everyone, it's just a smaller big step for some people".