Brazil "surprised at Argentina’s DTT progress”
Juan Pablo Conti ©RapidTVNews | 21-10-2011The Brazilian TV industry, which has been involved in the re-engineering of the ISDB-T standard used for digital terrestrial TV (DTT) systems in the region, is surprised at the pace that Argentina has been deploying the technology.
That, at least, is the view of Gustavo Bulla, Argentina's national director of supervision and evaluation at the Federal Authority on Audiovisual Communication Services (AFSCA).
"The Brazilians are very surprised at how Argentina has put its foot on the accelerator and is implementing this public policy that fosters the democratisation of quality, free-to-air (FTA) digital broadcast media," Bulla said while speaking to Radio Provincia.
The government official went as far as venturing an explanation as to why Brazil has not been able to match Argentina's DTT deployment speed – blaming media conglomerate O Globo for slowing down progress.
"I think the big difference between the two countries is that while in Argentina the pace is being set by the State through a popular government, in Brazil the popular government is having to deal with the fact that the big media octopus that is the O Globo network is involved in the planning [of the country's DTT infrastructure]," Bulla said.
"If in Argentina these types of new technologies were allowed to be introduced purely by market forces, as was the case during the 1990s, we already know how the story ends – in a way that produces inequality and ends up fracturing society even more [than it already is]."
The AFSCA official highlighted that, 60 years after terrestrial TV transmissions officially began in Argentina (on 17-10-1951) – and thanks to a very aggressive public investment programme – the country was on course to achieving what he called "the utopia of total coverage of the territory" by FTA DTT transmissions.
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