Switzerland pulls the plug on broadcast TV

Switzerland Is Doing Away With Over-the-Air TV. Could the U.S. Do the Same?

The Swiss government has given the country’s public broadcaster approval to turn off its digital terrestrial TV (known as over-the-air to most people) by the end of 2019. It will be the first nation in Europe to do so.

Most Swiss have high speed broadband internet connections and cable networks in their homes, so the move is unlikely to affect many citizens. Only 1.9% of the population, about 64,000 people, reportedly take advantage of the service that’s being discontinued.

This is unlikely to happen in the USA but it follows a familiar pattern. Society is overly dependent on digital infrastructure and the freak-out will be huge when the infrastructure fails.

 

I would say 75% of my coworkers use broadcast TV. Cable and satellite offer poor value in dollars spent vs either service or availability. Most supplement with Netflix type service.

There are perhaps 50-60 broadcast HD channels in DFW.

 

I Run an antenna and supplement with the Hulu $7.99 per month package. A whole lot cheaper than cable or sat. tv. But yeah I can see the over the air getting dumped in the near future.

 

While I am about 60 air miles from Boston, and 45 from other TV stations, with the new improved digital service, I can not pick up one station off the air due to hills and such. I can not get reliable 4 g service at home either, earlier versions worked well but the new high speed data, etc, systems do not work well. I have cable, but due to its monopoly pricing, use dsl on my phone and have low speed internet. Cable TV, high speed internet and reliable 4 g phone at my house will run over $200 a month and adding movies on demand, a sports package, or hula or a music service, will run the price up to around $300 a month and while most people here seem to think that is OK, I will not spend over about $100 a month and thus am very limited.

 

My personal opinion is to do away with all government funding to NPR and Broadcast TV (if it receives any funding, not sure, but I know NPR is still getting a small bit and I want it stopped - all of it!). Having said that...

Due to hills and trees I cannot receive Broadcast TV and the only way to get TV is via Satellite which I refuse to pay their horrid prices and get a ton of crap that I neither want or need. Satellite internet still isn't cheap and service is not always as advertise so that I could stream exactly what films I want. So, we do without or purchase or rent DVDs. I get my news over the internet and, sometimes but rarely over the radio.

Currently, I am looking at purchasing for $100 per month for supposedly 30Mb download speed with unlimited data, which still is very expensive and one doesn't know if the 30Mb will be maintained. I have HughesNet which supposedly gives 30Mb also but get only 20Gb data limit for $75 and that data speed does change at times...

 

There is millions being poured into the FCC mandated Re-pack for over the air television. ATSC 3.0 will be a new standard tied with 5G to send programming over the air to multiple devices such as cell phones, tablets, and televisions. It will allow targeted advertising and multiple channels per frequency. We are currently in the process of a re-pack at our station at around $3 million. Over the air won't go away for a long time in the United States.

 

Over the air may continue, but fewer and fewer people I know are watching it. The day of ever house with a TV antenna is long gone and the "local" channels often play games that they want to be paid for it to be on cable and it just disappears. The people that I know that do watch TV tend to have it on tablets or mobile devices rather than TV. The day of going into the den after supper and watching TV as a family are long gone.

 

I hope they won't... considering 65 %of my county is without broadband... and most folks are on the poor side with an income of 17 k a head...

 

You do have a very good point with the pricing if not for my services being included in the tower lease it would add up to around $300-$350 in service fees per month. On the other hand that tower is our only option for phone and internet in our remote area other than Sat. and in comparison Sat pans out more expensive and a whole lot less dependable. LOL someday I will have to take some pics of out land line telephone poles along the main state highway, half of them are at 45 degree angles or greater and some the bottoms of the poles rotted out or broke and the top of the pole is literally suspended by the lines.

 

Buckland, AK. Barely has telephone service.

 

We have a main fiber than runs down the State Hwy but most of our land lines are still on the copper and poles. Cost to me for a land line hooked to the fiber $37,400 to run it the 1.25 miles from the highway to my place............ And thus why most of us have cells, and high speed wireless or are on the copper and poles. Bad enough paying $26,000+ to have the underground electric and $24,000 to have the rural water line ran down here. But those were not optional for business reasons unlike the fiber. Could have did the electric for half that on poles but would have had to cut the tree canopy overhanging the road back 40' to either side and that would have chewed up any savings.

 

That just looks like skeeter heaven!

 

Skeeters kill the moose. Fly way with them and eat the moose at leisure....

 

@Thunder5Ranch "We have a main fiber than runs down the State Hwy but most of our land lines are still on the copper and poles."

Yes, that is the case in Northern Idaho and I think it most states. The main trunk lines have been replaced with fiber but everything else still remains copper. Pity really as many countries have fiber to the desktop. But, it's a business decision, of course; nevertheless, if we took half the Foreign Aid budget we could create a lot of new and good paying jobs to do so...but no. So, cell technology and satellite to avoid the infrastructure cost. Frankly, I believe we won't get the phone companies to do much of anything for rural communications for a long time because they got to pay for the satellites or the lease of bandwidth on the satellites. Mobile (cell) technology will never be as good as say fiber but they get good bang for their buck for it. 4G is horrible in my area unless you are a business paying big bucks which you can write off on business taxes as operating costs. I had it and had to drop it as totally saturated most the time. I got Satellite now which is okay but not great. I tried to talk to a company to put fiber down our road to connect 40 houses off the main fiber link (trunk line on the main road/highway) they wouldn't even consider it and told me the only reason they had the fiber trunk in was due to a small government (Navy) research facility down the road - so - come to find out, the government paid for the fiber link, tax dollars, not business dollars but business (phone company) reaps the benefits not the normal taxpaying people. Yep! Our tax dollars at work. Piggy banks and cannon fodder...

 

I tried Satellite, want to say it was Hughes net or something like that was a little faster than the old 56.6 modems and not cheap at all. Which was better than nothing, which is exactly what we had available. Then the tower folks came around looking for some place to put (At that time a 2G) tower. No one else wanted the Monster on their land so when they got to me, and made a very good offer on a 40 year lease that included 4 phones/services, regular upgrades to the Jet Pack as the tower was upgraded, totally unlimted data and the tower is upgraded fast to the next G when it happens. Nope it ain't a fiber connection but it is fast enough for me and I get a check for $1,189 like clock work the first week of every month for the next 32 year (Tower has been here 8 years now) Not bad income for a 70'x70' square of land. Pretty much everyone within 5 miles gets their phone service and internet from the tower and more than a few really regret not taking the tower deal. 5-6 times per year the service truck for the tower comes and does whatever they do in the little block building and one of the guys climbs all the way to the top (It is a very VERY long way to the top and then they leave. And as a bonus they pay the increase in property taxes caused by the tower. So you will never hear me complain much about the cell service..... My only complaint really was about 2 years ago when my unlimited got put on a NOT REALLY unlimited data consumer plan and I ran out of *Unlimited* Data the first 2 days of the month.... LOL I use around 60-70 gigs per month and the Consumer unlimted had 6 gigs at 4G and then dropped you to 1G for the remainder of the month........... 2 Days later I was back to real unlimited and 4G with a lot of apologies and the latest jet pack

Funny thing is they make different deals with land owners on the leases, the more hostile everyone is toward it, the better deal you get. And the more desperate the cell company is to put a tower in your area the better deal you get. I probably could have squeezed another couple hundred per month cash out of the lease but the phones/Data/and Internet were of greater long term value IMO.

If I ran the copper phone line down to me, I guess it would hook into some kind of converter and then into the fiber but would only be as good as the copper line going to the fiber. And no matter how you slice that bread it is a whole lot more money than I will ever spend on a phone line.

THE MONSTER as seen from google earth ground looking up view.