Tuesday, February 24, 2009

SARFT to Complete Terrestrial DTV Coverage in 3 Years

At the 2009 Broadcast Development Forum, Jiang Wenbo, director of the State Administration of Radio and Television (SARFT)'s Academy of Broadcasting Planning, stated that terrestrial digital television coverage is expected to be extended to 37 cities nationwide by the end of the year, including all provincial capitals. Within 3 years coverage will be extended nationwide, with total investment reaching RMB 2.5 bln. Currently 8 cities, including Beijing and Shenzhen, have terrestrial DTV coverage. RMB 500 mln has been invested so far, mainly towards frequency planning, signal coverage, and network access testing for terminals for the 37 cities participating in the first stage of construction.
Second stage plans include the expansion of standard definition DTV programming to 333 prefecture-level cities and 2,861 counties, with programming provided by CCTV, provincial, municipal and county stations. Jiang stated that China's analog signal will be cut off once all subscribers are able to receive digital coverage.

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