Digital Terrestrial Television

EBU DTT Promotion and Monitoring

Although public broadcasters are available on pay-TV platforms such as satellite, cable and IPTV, Terrestrial Television (Analogue and DTT) remains the backbone to free-to-air TV access and the most widely used means of receiving television globally. Over 300 million households receive Analogue TV and nearly 200 million households receive DTT, of which around 120 million are in Europe. Despite its success, many countries around the world are yet to begin or complete the digital switchover process.

Given DTT’s unique social and economic opportunities, governments, broadcasters and other industry stakeholders should maximise their collaboration to accelerate the roll out of DTT.

To help promote the win-win scenario successful DTT offers, EBU, BNE and DVB have embarked on a process to share knowledge and bring DTT experts together to facilitate the introduction of successful DTT in countries still reliant on analogue TV.

Join us

If you are interested in DTT, contact us to participate in the discussions. Some restrictions may apply. 

The following table gathers all relevant publications on DTT issued by the EBU, ITU, ECC and CEPT. For offline consulation click here for the downladable version. 

EBU Members can download the DTT Implementation Status database (.xlsx file, 17MB, published 08.11.2023), used to generate the tables and charts below. Several additional tables and charts are available within the database.

An updated version of the table is published every 5–6 months.

DTT Implementation Overview

DTT is the main distribution platform for TV content with ever-growing number of countries launching services.

Analogue switch-off (ASO) has been completed in 49% of the world's countries, which together are home to 62% of the world's population; an additional 8% of countries have set a date for ASO. In 43% of countries there is no formal date for ASO; those countries account for 26.8% of the world's population.

The map below shows the countries where ASO has been completed.

Eight countries planned to complete analogue switch-off during 2023.

The DVB family of standards are predominant globally; in particular DVB-T2 has emerged as the reference technology for DTT.

DTT coverage is also growing globally, with more than 95% of the population covered in half of the countries for which data is currently available. The box and whisker charts below illustrate how coverage varies within regions and from region to region. (The box shows the second and third quartiles, with the median marked by a line, and the mean by an X. The other dots show outliers for the region in question.)

While in some countries, up to 50–60, or even more, programmes are available free-to-air on DTT nationally, the range is more typically from 10 to 20 programmes.

PayDTT is a popular and important part of the digital television landscape, especially across Region 1 (with the notable exception, for now, of MENA countries). In countries where payDTT is available, the programme offer is usually extensive, ranging from 30 up to 100 or more programmes.

WRC-15 Results

The EBU is pleased to report that Region 1, most of Region 3 and South American countries in Region 2 have secured spectrum to facilitate investments that will stabilize Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) well into the 2020s. A small number of countries in North America (Canada, USA, Mexico, Colombia, and some Caribbean islands), Asia (Bangladesh) and Oceania (New Zealand, and some Pacific Islands) have allocated a portion (614 – 698 MHz), or the whole (470 – 698 MHz) of the UHF band to mobile broadband.  Read our WRC-15 Results Fact Sheet to find out more.