250,000 UK homes will not have a TV signal after switchover.

Ofcom, the British television regulator has been forced to reveal that 250,000 UK households will be unable to receive any time of terrestrial TV signal once the analogue TV service is terminated. Experts believe that the actual number may be considerably, higher.

The regulator also said that approximately 0.3% of UK households, or around 75,000 homes will be unable receive a digital-terrestrial signal. Ofcom also says that there will be regions, with either “poor or no coverage” via digital-terrestrial signals.

Some homes in these areas may be able to receive satellite-delivered TV, but certainly not all. Approximately one point four percent of British households (350,000 homes) will become outside of the coverage area for Freeview. Around a quarter of a million homes will be able to receive DTT signal ‘some of the time’.

This translates as households receiving a disrupted signal for approximately 2 months each year. The worst affected area will be the Scottish region of Ayrshire. This information came from Ofcom’s fourth quarter 2007 progress report, which had a general up-beat opinion of the UK’s analogue TV demise.

They believe that over 86% of UK homes will be able to receive some kind of digital TV either by satellite, terrestrial or cable. This prediction is up 1.5% on the previous quarter.

In the last three months of 2007 over half a million homes converted to digital TV.
In total 4m DTT set-top boxes or digitally-equipped TV sets were sold. Many of the set-top converters are now being installed onto second and subsequent TVs.