El Salvador readies for DTT reboot


Details

Juan Fernandez Gonzalez

| 14 January 2016




After suspending the DTT transition in 2014, El Salvador has finished a new plan to deploy digital television.



The Superintendencia General de Electricidad y Telecomunicaciones (SIGET) has revised the original DTT plan and handed it over to the Congress commission in charge of proposing the reform of the general telecom law.

Although the plan's content hasn't been revealed, it contains specifications such as a new switch-off date and the broadcasting standard to be adopted.

“The SIGET has to promote universal access to quality telecom services as well as to regulate an efficient use of the radioelectric spectrum and the television networks,” said Blanca Noemí Coto, head of the telecom authority.

The country had initially chosen the Japanese ISDB-T, as Brazil has, but then suspended the DTT plan and decided to start it over, having to pick again among the US' ATSC, Europe's DVB (which so far has been only adopted by Colombia) and the ISDB-T.

The decision to stop El Salvador's DTT process was made public in September 2014, taking most national broadcasters by surprise.