Mexico. The Federal Institute of Telecommunications, IFT, approved an Agreement whose purpose is to facilitate the concessionaires of the open television service the use of additional programming channels under the multiprogramming scheme, to temporarily disseminate the audiovisual content that includes the school sessions that the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) is transmitting in the face of the contingency due to the COVID-19 epidemic.
Taking into account that, according to the latest National Survey on availability and use of Information Technologies in Homes (Endutih), 92.5% of households have at least one television, and with the aim of expanding information spaces in favor of the population, mainly of a school and educational nature, the IFT seeks to facilitate that the contents of the SEP can reach the largest number of population in the country for free.
Through this mechanism, which allows more than one programming channel to be transmitted on the same transmission channel, and due to force majeure, concessionaires may make their request for access to multiprogramming, without being subject to the requirements and formalities of the procedure provided for in the
General Guidelines for Access to Multiprogramming, as long as the objective is to transmit the programming of school sessions prepared by the SEP for this period of emergency due to the COVID-19 disease.
This temporary transmission in multiprogramming will be limited until the date on which the competent authorities in health and educational matters determine, by any means or communication of an official nature, the resumption of school activities throughout the country in person.
For this procedure, the concessionaires must inform the IFT of their adhesion to said Agreement through the email: [email protected], attaching a written document in PDF format signed by the legal representative of the concessionaire that has prior accreditation before the Institute.
Once the concessionaires have the electronic acknowledgment of receipt by the Media and Audiovisual Content Unit of the IFT, they will be able to transmit the programming channel in multiprogramming using the virtual channel that was previously assigned by the Institute to the station in question (using the secondary number of their choice), e.g. 25.1, 25.2, etc.
For those concessionaires who already have access to multiprogramming and who, temporarily, want to make a change of programmatic identity for the purpose of transmitting the audiovisual content of the SEP, the process will be carried out without the need to follow the requirements of the General Guidelines for Access to Multiprogramming, related to the change of programmatic identity, so it will be enough to send a free letter through the same indicated mail, in which they express their intention to temporarily change the programmatic identity of one of the channels that operate in multiprogramming.
