MPs urge government to act swiftly on ITV Digital

Claire Billings,

May 01, 2002

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MPs urge government to act swiftly <BR>on ITV Digital

LONDON - MPs are calling on the government to take swift action to ensure the survival of the digital terrestrial service if ITV Digital goes into liquidation in the next few days, as expected.

The collapse of ITV Digital, which provided the only competition to BSkyB in some areas of the UK, plunges the government's hopes of switching off the analogue signal by 2010 into serious doubt.

A committee of MPs, chaired by Labour MP Gerald Kaufman, has drafted a report urging the government to take measures including providing free set-top boxes in order that the deadline can still be met.

The report called it "the responsibility of the government" to ensure that the free-to-air services, such as those provided by ITV and the BBC, are available to all.

The report said: "In light of the recent offer for sale of ITV Digital by its administrator, it is the responsibility of government to ensure the availability of the free-to-air channels. This is the result of the importance the government attaches to healthy competition between the three existing digital platforms to achieve progress towards digital switch-over in the timescale envisaged."

The report went on to call for the government to conduct analyses of the costs, benefits and market impact of providing free digital set-top boxes to enable analogue switch-off to be achieved.

ITV Digital was officially put up for sale on Thursday and its licence put out to tender by the Independent Television Commission. However, the company's administrator has failed to find a credible buyer, which resulted in the pay channels it had been receiving free from its suppliers being taken off air this morning.

ITV Digital's 1.2m subscribers have been left with a handful of free channels including ITV2, BBC Choice, BBC Four, BBC News 24 and a few shopping channels such as QVC.

The company is understood to have some money left from the funding provided by its owners Carlton and Granada when it was put into administration. This is expected to run out within days and the company will go into liquidation, leaving customers with blank screens unless a buyer is found or the government intervenes.

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