A new report has criticised governments for artificially speeding up the take up of digital TV, saying they should stop forcing digital terrestrial TV on consumers and instead allow market forces and commercial providers of cable and satellite services to dictate the speed of digital take-up.
In the report Forrester Research say: "Making money from digital terrestrial looks as hard as milking a stone and forcing consumers to take it just won't work. Governments should recall digital audio broadcasting - another technology that has never found its market - and stop pushing the inherently flawed DTT.” They predicted that any enforced ‘switch-off’ of analogy TV would cause "consumer uproar".
Earlier this year, Forrester forecast digital terrestrial TV would be available in just 11% of European households by 2007. It now reckons even this statistic is optimistic after the collapse of ITV Digital in the UK and the Quiero Television digital network in Spain. They say terrestrial digital TV operators will never be able to make profits because those consumers who want multi-channel TV would rather take a satellite or cable option which offers many more channels for a monthly subscription not much higher than terrestrial TV networks.