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 | | Saturday, 27 April, 2002, 21:31 GMT 22:31 UK Europe's digital failings  Digital TV faces difficulties across Europe
ITV Digital is not alone. The woes of the Britain's digital terrestrial TV (DTT) broadcaster are mirrored by pay television companies across Europe. The latest victim is Quiero TV, Spain's commercial digital terrestrial company. Quiero's main shareholders decided that with losses of more than $20m a month, the company was no longer economically viable, Spain's ABC newspaper said. The company's total losses are estimated at about $539m. Spain pulls the plug "Spain's pay-TV market is relatively small, while competition from heavyweights such as Canal Plus, owned by Vivendi of France, and Telefonica with its Via Digital satellite TV platform, made Quiero TV a losing proposition," the Financial Times commented. The fate of the company now lies in the hands of the Spanish Government. The ITV Digital-Quiero double whammy has badly shaken the confidence of European investors in digital TV. But it is only the latest in a long line of difficulties for the digital media in Europe. Scandinavian setbacks Boxer, the company that rents out set-top boxes in Sweden, is struggling to compete with rival satellite and cable platforms which have greater capacity and offer more choice to the consumer.
In Finland, where DTT was launched nationally last year, growth has been slow. This is mainly owing to the shortage of specialist set-top boxes. And in Norway, the government plans to hand out basic DTT set-top boxes to all licence payers in a bid to prompt a faster transition from analogue to digital television. Lack of enthusiasm In Germany - Europe's biggest TV market - there is little enthusiasm for digital terrestrial TV, because of the dominance of cable and satellite. The same applies to the Netherlands and Belgium, which both have high cable penetration. Other governments, among them France, Italy and Ireland, are still contemplating the launch of DTT. And after the simultaneous failure of commercial DTT in Britain and Spain, two of Europe's largest TV markets, they could soon be contemplating whether to limit the platform to the delivery of free-to-air services. BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. | | See also:  Internet links: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites Top Media reports stories now:  Links to more Media reports stories are at the foot of the page. | ||||||||||
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