A too costly blackout

The analogical blackout comes. On April 3 the television will be digital. Spain leads the career for being one of the first countries of the world in turning to the TDT. Too rapid? Perhaps we have spent too much money-12.000 million euros, according to Industry - with an enormous effort of the citizens to adapt his antennas and TV sets for an indispensable technology for the transmission, but that will not be the platform of the new means.

To be the most rapid has his price. The future of the new technologies is very far of the TDT, with little interactive capacity and of new services. The wide band in fixed and mobile networks is the key infrastructure for a sustainable economy and a connected society. The European Commission checks his rules on the public financing of the networks to stimulate investments delayed by the big phone companhies and to achieve that in 2020 all the Europeans have access of at least 30 gentle ones. A plan less ambitious than the presented one in the United States so that all the North Americans take access of high quality to Internet and to the digital services both as fixed and mobile networks.

And the television changes Internet. When the new audio-visual law is discussed, televisions and politicians are the big interested parties in supporting a licenses system every more obsolete day: an enclosed number of chains and with political control of contents and business. The television for Internet (IPTV) liberates users and chains to choose and to distribute his contents as they want. Although the sustentabilidad of the business, of publicity or of payment, is still not clear, Britons and North Americans lead the search of of the convergence.

Meanwhile, the Government is confident of being pioneers in the TDT to expand the market of the industry of the Spanish television. But the big Latin-American countries like Brazil or Argentina have preferred the Japanese system to the European and the expectations disappear. The blackout can cost more of the awaited thing.

Column in the Vocento means