Abertis calls for DTT upgrade

摘要

Abertis Telecom, the Spanish transmission operator, this week insisted on the need for Spain to upgrade its digital-terrestrial service to include pay-television and advanced services such as high-definition television and video-on-demand. The company, involved in various trials and pilots of new digital-terrestrial services under the heading TDT 2.0, said that it was crucial to ensure that the platform remained competitive against its rivals. "We want digital-terrestrial television to have advanced services so that it can compete with platforms such as Imagenio, cable and satellite which are all platforms that are continuing to evolve technologically," said Alex Mestre, Abertis Telecom strategic marketing manager. "We cannot allow DTT to become merely the digital-ization of analogue television." To this end, rolling out reception equipment with interactive middleware was essential, he said. Although the MHP standard has been deployed in the Spanish market, it is included in less than five per cent of the 6.48 million digital-terrestrial receivers so far deployed, provoking concern among retailers and various levels of government which are keen on t-commerce and t-administration services.