Digital terrestrial: from 2019 come the first incentives for decoders

In the Budget Law 2019 provided incentives to buy televisions and decoders that support the new MPEG 4 standard. Here's how you can use them

It will be 151 million euros the money allocated by the Government to incentivize the purchase of televisions and decoders that support the new DVB-T2 standard that from 2020 will allow the viewing of digital terrestrial channels in Italy. In fact, the frequencies occupied so far by digital terrestrial will have to be freed to make room for 5G and will be moved to new radio frequencies using the MPEG 4 standard.

The Budget Law under discussion in the Chambers provides a fund of 151 million euros to incentivize the purchase of decoders and televisions: the money will be available from 2019 to 2022 or until exhaustion. The objective is to arrive in 2022 (date by which the switch-off of the frequencies will be completed) with the entire Italian population equipped with a device that can transmit with the new DVB-T2 standard. The new technology chosen for the transmission of digital terrestrial channels is already present on all televisions purchased since January 2017: the DVB-T2 standard was chosen to create as few problems as possible for users.

Digital terrestrial, what will change from 2020

The digital terrestrial switch-off will begin on January 1, 2020 and will take place in steps until December 31, 2021. The first regions affected by the change of frequency will be Liguria, Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio, Campania and Sardinia and will end with some provinces of Veneto, Emilia - Romagna, Marche, Friuli - Venezia - Giulia, Molise, Puglia, Basilicata and the provinces of Cosenza and Crotone. The migration of frequencies will allow the Italian State to free the 700MHz band and start working on the national 5G network.

The change of frequency of digital terrestrial is expected to impact about 35% of the Italian population that does not have at home a TV set that supports the new DVB-T2 standard. In fact, all TVs sold from January 2017 onwards already have a built-in decoder and will have no problem broadcasting digital terrestrial channels when the frequency switch-off takes place. To understand if your TV is able to transmit channels with MPEG 4 standard, just do a simple test: tune in to the HD channels of Rai, Mediaset or LA7. If you do not have any kind of problems, then it means that your TV is already ready for digital terrestrial 2.0. if not, you can benefit from the incentives made available with the Budget Law 2019.