Digital take-up encourages Jowell to stick to analogue switch-off date

The Government has insisted that it may be able to hit its much-derided target date of 2010 for switching off the analogue television signal.

Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, has been emboldened by a report submitted to her by the Independent Television Commission and the BBC about digital switch-over. In response, Ms Jowell said the Government was considering a series of policy moves that would accelerate the take-up of digital television, which is currently in 40 per cent of homes.

The study said the number of digital households could almost double by 2007 to 78 per cent and this would make switch-over possible by 2010 . The Government says the analogue signal will only be switched off when 95 per cent of homes have access to digital services.

Ms Jowell said: "Doomsayers may suggest we won't meet the target. I would say to them that if industry can make this much progress on its own, anything is possible."

Achieving 2010 was considered all but impossible by the industry until the last few months, when the phenomenal success of Freeview, the relaunched digital terrestrial service that provides free-to-air channels, has made the sector rethink its assumptions. Freeview could be in three or four million of the country's 25 million homes by the end of this year, by which point BSkyB's digital satellite service aims to have seven million subscribers. Cable has some four million homes, although only half of these are digital.

The ITC/BBC report warned however that on more pessimistic take-up assumptions, digital television penetration would be only 58 per cent by 2007, in which case "active policy interventions by Government would certainly need to be considered". These include requiring all new televisions to be digital sets by a certain date.