Mexico. As of May 28, Tijuana becomes the first city in Mexico to have 100% of digital television, successfully culminating the pilot project of digital television that had been implemented by the Mexican government.
According to information from Cofetel, currently in this city the coverage on digital television is more than 90%, which will allow the analog blackout to take place by the end of May. In addition, they will be able to recover 48 Megahertz (Mhz) of radio spectrum and release the 700 Mhz band in that locality.
The regulator entity stressed that to achieve the blackout in Tijuana , 216 antenna installers and decoders intervened who walked through streets, ravines and hills, as well as the staff of the commission in charge of directing and supervising.
In order to achieve this goal, they had to deliver free set-top boxes to people with limited resources. According to the information reviewed and validated by Cofetel, the number of households whose service depends on open television, that is, of scarce resources and that do not have pay TV, in which a decoder and / or digital antenna was installed in Tijuana is 192,060.
To determine the universe of households that received the decoders and /or antennas, Cofetel relied on the data provided by Enpetah, as well as on the estimate resulting from Coneval's indicators on the population of Tijuana. In this way, and with the information available at that time, a universe of between 179,000 and 200,000 homes was projected in which equipment had to be installed that would allow capturing the digital signals of open television.
