The end of Freeview

According to Cordbusters, Freeview is planned to end on one of two dates.

https://www.cordbusters.co.uk/govern...freeview-gone/

Freeview could be switched off when the current broadcasting licences expire on December 31, 2034, or it could be given a time-limited extension to December 31, 2044.

The government apparently prefers the earlier date.

[Jaymoss]

Free aerial TV, the way millions of us have watched for over two decades, is being lined up for retirement in favour of telly delivered over your broadband.


soon as I read that the post lost all credibility and I could no longer read it. Over 2 decades more like 9 decades (BBC started broadcasting TV in 1936 1 hour in the afternoon and 1 hour in the evening )

[Carth]

It's happening to almost everything, one basket + all the eggs.

The Internet is fast becoming the sole provider of everything you want and need . . . thank goodness it's not prone to occasional screw ups and down time

That ‘news’ article could have been written by OB himself.

It’s full of confirmation bias (as well as affiliate links), and you only have to go a few paragraphs down to establish that el gov has merely published a green paper. Even when one of these contains a preferred option, the whole point of a green paper is to start a high-level discussion around general concepts. If they had a workable plan to actually end Freeview in 2034 it would be in a white paper, and even that is somewhere short of a bill for discussion and passing as an Act of Parliament.

[RichardCoulter]

Maybe the King will refuse to sign the white paper into law.

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

Maybe the King will refuse to sign the white paper into law.

That’s not how any of it works …

[thenry]

Freely admittedly needs polishing but is very good. Dishes, aerials are ugly.

Originally Posted by thenry

Freely admittedly needs polishing but is very good. Dishes, aerials are ugly.

A great idea that won’t take over the heavy lifting currently done by Freeview unless and until all TV manufacturers selling to the UK market are compelled to make their products compatible with it.

[thenry]

They've turned 3g off why not freeview

Freely isn't readily available as an APK. I don't understand why.

Originally Posted by thenry

They've turned 3g off why not freeview

Freely isn't readily available as an APK. I don't understand why.

Because everyone has a 4g or a 5g phone. 3G never had adequate coverage because the auction for spectrum ran out of control. The networks paid for frequencies they then didn’t have the money to exploit with actual network build-out.

3G has gone because nobody needs 3G. We do still need Freeview. Well ok, technically we don’t, we can get near-universal coverage with Freesat, but the politics of forcing every house to have a satellite dish are sticky.

[thenry]

Was 3g infrared nonsense?

I remember when south Korea had 100meg+ on the railway while we lagged behind. Embarrassing really. The strides forward need to continue in this country.

Originally Posted by thenry

Was 3g infrared nonsense?

I remember when south Korea had 100meg+ on the railway while we lagged behind. Embarrassing really. The strides forward need to continue in this country.

No, 3G was cellular radio telephone, exactly the same as what you have now, just operating on a lower radio frequency so not as much bandwidth for data. More data throughput than 2G, less than 4G. The problem wasn’t the technology, which was as good as it got at the time, the problem was the networks bid so much to get the rights to own the radio frequencies they needed, they didn’t have enough money left to actually build the network fully. And the UK government (New Labour under Blair and Brown at the time) were complicit - they lowered the network coverage requirement precisely because they knew it would make the auction more valuable.