Whitehaven, a small town in Cumbria, UK, has become the first British town to go completely digital, and have their analogue signal switched off. After stage one on October 17th, 2,500 homes woke up yesterday morning to find they could only watch their favourite television programmes through a digital set top box.

While it’s quite exciting to see the process of switching 60 million people in the UK over from analogue to digital television, the process hasn’t been without its problems. For starters, there is the fact that 500 homes, accounting for 1,200 people failed to buy the necessary equipment needed for them to receive digital signals.

1,200 people isn’t too many, but if you extrapolate that across the whole of Great Britain, you’re talking about over a million people. Whitehaven is just the first town to have their analogue signal cut off, with the whole process expected to be completed by 2012.

Digital UK, the body responsible for the process were pleased with the result, and claimed it was human nature to leave the upgrade to the last minute. They also compared the UK with Finland and Sweden, where during their change, 5 – 10 per cent of people waited right until the end.

The UK government has set aside a budget of £600 million to advertise, offer advice, and give out information packs about the long process, with £1 million being spent in Whitehaven itself.

Buying a Freeview box, the equipment needed to watch digital television in the UK, only costs between £20 and £50 so claims that this switch-over is out of people’s price range are ludicrous. Over 75s, the blind and people on some benefits are eligible for help in getting one television set converted to receive the signals, but everyone else has to pay the going rate.

If the lessons from the Whitehaven experiment are taken on board, the UK switch-over should be quite plain sailing, although I can see some fun and games when it reaches cities like Manchester, Birmingham, and of course London.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 5:07 pm under Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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