RTBF starts using emergency broadcast tower

June 8, 2014 09.30 Europe/London By Robert Briel


Belgian public broadcaster RTBF has started using an emergency broadcast tower after a fire destroyed parts of the Wavre transmitter facility.

The temporary tower houses the broadcaster’s FM, DAB and DTT transmitters providing limited coverage during the six months that it will take to rebuild the original broadcast infrastructure. The fire also impacted the GSM network of the three Belgian mobile operators, Proximus, Mobistar and Base.

French language broadcaster RTBF has started using the newly erected back-up tower for all its services, FM, DAB and DTT, on the original frequencies. However, coverage is limited because the temporary mast is lower than the original one.