An early warning on digital switchover

Back in November, I noted the story from Sweden that politicians were having second thoughts about the whole digital radio thing. Well, the Netherlands has travelled further down the digital road than anywhere else, and actually switched off analogue TV transmissions on Sunday (10th).

Here is the sorry tale about how it went. Badly, apparently. According to the "no picture" website, there's been hundreds of complaints sparked by poor reception. Quite large towns are without reception at all and this is despite a push from the digital operator to give users aerial adapters. Which it seems aren't doing the job. We're not talking about a large country or large population here, either.

Arguably, of course, you could say that hundreds of thousands, nay, millions of people didn't complain and / or have nothing to complain about. But the fact that the decision to actually switch off took place without absolute certainty of coverage is somewhat worrying.

So as we in the UK go hurtling towards a similar digital switch off, I really hope problems like those the Dutch suffered at the weekend are ironed out.

Listen up OFCOM, it could happen to you, too.