Mexico. The Policy of the Transition to Digital Terrestrial Television established May 29, 2014 as the date on which analog broadcasts would conclude in the cities of Monterrey, Nuevo León; Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa and Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. These cities were considered as part of the pilot tests of the DTT Policy within 2014.
In accordance with the provisions of the DTT Policy, if one month before the analog blackout is due in a certain locality, a penetration level of 90% of DTT has not been reached, the date must be adjusted to terminate analog transmissions in that city.
In this sense, and in order to have reliable information on the adoption of DTT in the five cities in the north of the country in which the analog blackout was established for May 29, 2014, the Federal Institute of Telecommunications (IFT), through the Radio and Television Systems Unit (USRTV), it contracted the services of a company to know the type of television service that is received in these locations and thus know the levels of penetration of DTT.
In extraordinary session, the USRTV presented the status report to the IFT Plenary
that keeps the penetration of DTT in the cities of Monterrey, Ciudad Juárez, Reynosa, Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo, whose results are the following:
- 8,786 surveys were conducted in the 5 cities
- Of the households that have a TV, between 54 and 77% depend on free-to-air television.
- In none of the five cities is a DTT penetration equal to or greater than 90% achieved in households that depend on open television.
When the condition was not met, the IFT Plenary resolved to modify the Agreement adopting the technological standard of Digital Terrestrial Television and establishing the Policy for the Transition to Digital Terrestrial Television in Mexico, published on June 2, 2004, amended, in turn, on May 4, 2012, April 4, June 1, and July 31, 2013.
With this modification, the date of termination of analog broadcast television transmissions in the five cities in the north of the country referred to is adjusted, according to the general calendar foreseen for 2014 in the DTT Policy, that is, to November 26, 2014.
