The French audiovisual regulator, the CSA, says the country’s second DTT switch-over, from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4, has been a success.
For viewers, the principal effect of the change, which took place overnight from the 4th to the 5th of April, is that nearly all the channels in France’s DTT offer are now broadcast in HD: only news-channel LCI, owned by TF1, and regional channel Paris Première, owned by M6, are still transmitting in standard-definition mode.
The move was triggered by the government’s decision to auction off the so-called 700MHz frequencies to mobile operators last November. Although the switch to HD took place overnight, the ‘re-farming’ of the now-vacant audiovisual frequencies will be a phased affair lasting three and a half years.
The region of Ile-de-France, which takes in Paris and the surrounding area, has already begun to benefit from new mobile services. The first of seven further regional blocks will begin to be freed up for mobile use in October 2017, with the rest migrating at three-month intervals after that. The Northern and Eastern border areas will be the last to benefit, on June 30th, 2019 at the latest.
Despite the claimed success of the HD switchover process, however, the final shape of the French DTT offer has yet to be nailed down.
The reason that LCI and Paris Première are currently still broadcasting in standard-definition is that their applications for HD capacity were put at the end of the queue in last year’s CSA-run spectrum allocation process, since they had both wanted simultaneously to change their status from paid-for to free-to-air.
The CSA had initially turned both applications down, but was subsequently over-ruled by France’s Conseil d’Etat (Council of State), the country’s Supreme Court for administrative issues, which asked the regulator to look at the decision again.
The CSA duly re-examined its decision, determining the second time round that LCI should be allowed to go free after all, but maintaining its refusal to allow Paris Première to do the same.
In parallel, the CSA had decided to deprive another DTT free-to-air channel, Numéro 23, of its licence in June this year, alleging that its owner, Diversité TV, which had acquired the licence for free in 2012, had done so with the intention of selling it on to NextRadioTV (owners of the BFM TV, and RMC Découverte DTT channels) at a profit. This, argued the CSA, amounted to “fraudulent speculation” with respect to public spectrum, and the licence should therefore be withdrawn.
Conveniently, since Numéro 23 broadcasts in HD, its disappearance would have liberated just enough DTT capacity to permit both LCI and Paris Première’s applications for HD spectrum to be granted, since they would themselves have been freeing up two SD frequencies by doing so, thereby creating an all-HD DTT platform.
Unfortunately, however, on March 30, with only five days to go to the HD switch, the Conseil d’Etat, on appeal, over-ruled the CSA for a second time, saying it had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Numéro 23’s owners were guilty of speculation at the time they acquired the licence. The channel will, therefore, hold on to its HD slot.
However, an-all HD environment could still emerge if M6 were to wind up Paris Première, which it has previously said has no viable future as a pay-TV channel.
This would liberate enough capacity for LCI to move to HD.
