US television stations shut down analogue broadcasts last week in a nationwide switch to digital. The transition has been planned for years, and was even delayed from its original date in February, but as many as 3 million households ended up with blank screens. Around 85% of Americans have cable or satellite, and will not be affected.

As the analogue transmitters turned off, mobile TV broadcaster FLO TV was able to switch on nationwide. The service - which offers channels of live news, sport and regular and specialist programming for an extra US$10 to US$15 a month - predicts it will now have access to 100 major markets and more than 200 million potential customers by the end of the year. Rival MobiTV currently has 7 million subscribers.

Existing broadcasters plan to equip their transmitters to offer free-to-air channels on mobile phones, with tests planned for this summer.

Hot on the heels of yesterday's announcement that the BBC has signed a deal with some of its major broadcasting rivals over providing HDTV on Freeview, comes the news that Ed Richards, chief executive of Ofcom, has announced that the regulator has sanctioned a large expansion of DTT capacity. This should not only free up precious broadcasting spectrum for other uses, but will mean that HDTV channels may be widely available on Freeview within two years. It all seems to be coming together for HDTV in the UK.

Mr. Richards says that the new capacity could allow almost 99% of the country to watch the London Olympics in high definition by the time they roll round in 2012. He commented:

"This allows us to stay at the forefront of digital TV broadcasting."

Members of the HD For All lobby group, which include the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sony, are urging the government to ensure that space for public service high defintion (HD) channels is made available on Freeview. Regulator Ofcom is due to auction the spectrum that could be used for these channels next year, but it is feared that public service broadcasters will be outbid by commercial TV companies and telecoms groups.

Michael Grade, ITV's executive chairman, said:

Retailers, manufacturers and rival broadcasters are determined to get the government and the regulator to understand... the level of consumer anger they are going to face after analogue switchover when the public realise that they will be unable to receive their favourite channels in HD on Freeview on the HD-ready TV sets they are buying in their millions.

Over 2.6 million people in the UK have bought HD-ready television, and the technology is popular on pay-TV services such as Sky; HD channels broadcast more detailed images than standard digital technology.

The Irish public broadcaster RTE has started trial broadcasts of six new digital radio stations. They join the 11 stations currently broadcasting digitally in the test area of Dublin and the North East of Ireland. The new stations are the first digital-only stations in the country; the other 11 are simulcasts of existing analogue channels. The trial will last until November.

Meanwhile, the first digital terrestrial television (DTT) transmission in Africa took place at a trade show in Johannesburg on Tuesday.

A consortium of broadcasters in New Zealand has just launched a free digital television platform called Freeview.

At the moment Freeview broadcasts just five television channels and two radio stations by satellite, and viewers must buy a satellite dish and decoder to receive it, which could cost up to NZ$600. However, Freeview plans to add more channels in the future - 'including a family channel, News and Factual channel, and specific special interest channels'. And in 2008 it will launch a digital terrestrial platform, which will allow 75% of households to receive its signals without a satellite dish.

New Zealand's Freeview will hope to emulate the success of Freeview in the UK, which at the end of 2006 was the main provider of digital television to 7.7 million households, or 30% of the total.

Freeview now claims to be the most popular multichannel platform in the UK, having become the primary means of watching digital TV in 8.2m homes. BSkyB had attracted just over 8.4 million customers as of the end of 2006, but this figure includes Ireland.

At the same time, the service annuonced the launch of its new DVR, the Freeview Playback, which will launch next month and be available for around £170. Around 500,000 traditional video recorders were sold in December 2006, despite the fact that they will not work properly once digital switchover happens (it will not be possible to watch one channel and record another simultaneously). Freeview is confident that its Playback will be a bestseller, and hopes to overtake Sky in this area too. Sky's Sky+ PVR takeup broke through 2 million in 2006.