THE National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has finally issued the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) for the country’s migration to the Japanese standard for digital terrestrial television broadcasting (DTTB).
The document included provisions on channel planning, capital spending, frequency allocation and the specific steps that the industry must undertake during the shift from analog broadcast service to digital, specifically the Integrated Service Digital Broadcasting-Terrestrial (ISDB-T) standard of Japan.
The migration, according to the plan, will involve a year-long transition period wherein both the analog and the digital transmissions will be used at the same time.
This period will commence when the digital switch on—or the date of the effectivity of the IRR—starts. After one year, the regulator will terminate all of the analog television services in the country, a period known as the analog shut-off.
Duly authorized analog very-high frequency (VHF) TV operators shall be required to simulcast their DTTB service together with the analog TV service within one year upon effectivity of this IRR, subject to the provisions of this IRR and other pertinent rules and regulations that the NTC may be issue in the future. If any VHF TV operator is unable to simulcast, other qualified ultra-high frequency (UHF) TV operator may be allowed to use for their simulcast the frequency assigned to the VHF operator that is unable to simulcast, the rules read.
During the transition period, broadcasters will have to double their expenses, to which the regulator hopes to mitigate through a quick deployment of the new technology.
The NTC will also assign a bandwidth of 6 megahertz (MHz) to each authorized digital TV operator per service area. “A duly authorized DTTB service provider shall be have the option in its application to the commission to adopt either single or multiprogram HDTV [high-definition television] format or single or multi-program SDTV [standard-definition] format or any combination thereof for its digital service,” the regulator noted.
The migration plan, which allocates the frequency bands 512-698 MHz (Channels 21 to 51), also encourages operators to add new programs to the analog legacy program.