Gov to Set UK Plan for Terrestrial TV Switch Off – Dependent Upon Broadband
The UK Government is expected to publish a new Green Paper in the next few weeks, which will set out their proposed plan for switching off terrestrial TV signals as part of a move toward internet-based streaming platforms. But the chosen date will be contingent upon universal coverage of affordable “superfast broadband” and other supporting requirements.
Few will have failed to notice that there has been a radical shift in how we all access and view TV content over the past two decades. Such content is now increasingly being viewed online, via services like Netflix, Amazon (Prime Video), Sky Glass / Sky Stream, NOW TV, Virgin Media (Stream Box), YouTube, Disney+, Freely and so forth. Meanwhile, the number of people viewing traditional Digital Terrestrial TV (DTT) signals has declined.
At the same time Ofcom have been busy introducing new rules to help lay the groundwork for a more streaming centric future (here, here and here), such as by modernising the country’s broadcasting regulations and expanding them to cover video-on-demand services. Suffice to say that there will come a point where the economics of maintaining terrestrial TV signals no longer makes sense.
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The Public Service Broadcasters’ (PSBs) currently support a transition to IPTV in the mid-2030s as it will become increasingly challenging for them to bear double costs from running multiple distribution platforms. At present the UK Government has committed to the future of DTT until 2034, although some Arqiva-based (vested interest in UK tower sites) campaign groups would like to see this extended (possibly to at least 2040). But one way or another, a cut-off date will soon have to be set.
However, according to a previous 2024 Government report on the future of TV distribution (here), come 2040 it’s forecast that some 5% of UK homes (1.5 million) will still rely on digital terrestrial television via the airwaves. The same report predicted that “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) would reach at least 99.65% of homes by 2030 (at the end of 2025 it was around 98.5%), although such figures may be open to question given the recent slowdown in some deployments of even faster broadband networks.
Just to be clear. The 1.5 million figure above reflects 0.4 million homes that will opt not to connect to broadband and 1.1 million homes that will have broadband, but which will not connect their TVs to use an internet TV service. “These viewers are more likely to identify as female and to live on their own. They are also more likely to live in the north of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, be on low incomes and have a disability,” said the report.
The new Green Paper
According to a new report from the Telegraph (paywall), the government will in the next few weeks set out a new Green Paper (preliminary consultation document) to summarise their proposed plan for phase-out and then switching off the old terrestrial TV signals. But this will be contingent upon a number of conditions.
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Expected Conditions
➤ “Superfast broadband” connections MUST be available across the whole of the UK and at affordable prices (superfast isn’t defined by the newspaper, but we assume it means 30Mbps+).
➤ Streaming TV user interfaces must be simple and easy to use for all audiences (modern TV’s are considerably more complex to use and that will have to change).
➤ Both broadcasters and broadband internet providers will be required to provide help and support for those making the transition (it’s unclear if this will be limited to fixed line broadband).
➤ The government are aware that c.1 million homes are still struggling to afford broadband, even with the availability of cheaper Social Tariffs. Ministers are understood to be considering providing a special subsidy to such users, which could be funded either through goverment support or a levy (tax) on consumer bills (recent history suggests it may be the latter, which won’t go down well with cost conscious consumers).
The idea also raises complicated questions about how such a system might be imposed across such a diverse UK market, which may be dominated by a handful of major ISPs but is also home to hundreds of smaller providers and various different networks (will it be limited to fixed lines or also extend to mobile broadband, satellite etc.).
A spokesman for the Government (DSIT / DCMS) said:
“We are committed to ensuring that no one is left behind as TV viewing increasingly moves to online platforms. That is why the Government is currently working across the TV sector on a long-term sustainable approach to TV distribution in the UK. This will include a decision, as soon as possible, on whether to extend the current commitment to digital terrestrial television beyond 2034.”
We should point out that the latest of video compression technologies can already squeeze a full HD video stream down to work over an average download speed of 2.5Mbps (compared with about 5-6Mbps today) and rising to 12.5Mbps for 4K (UltraHD) quality. But this does tend to require a more powerful CPU and broadcasters often prefer cheaper kit with a wider degree of support, although come 2034 such technology will have further improved and become more widespread.
However, the key focus will clearly be on that small group of homes who have either refused (or been unable) to upgrade their broadband to cope with internet-connected TV streaming, or those who continue to use a traditional TV service for other reasons (income, disability, choice etc.).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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This looks like the PSTN switch off all over again.
Freely should be the future service and it should be rolled out as such – not restricted to needing a new TV, or a dedicated box.
When these things change they end up spending millions to keep those who don’t like change happy.
I mostly agree, but there is still the problem where viewers without broadband will now be required to get connected before they can use Freely, or by that time yet another proprietary system that obsoletes existing equipment.
At least with the switch to VoIP, ISPs could gloss over the need for an underlying internet connection by providing it for “free”. Still had those who whinged about power cuts though.
If only we’d adopted FTTP a lot earlier than we did, where we could have carried Freeview as an RF signal on the fibre and then it could be provided for free to those who need it. Effectively turning us into Switzerland where virtually everyone can get cable TV and the few who can’t could use satellite.
Freely have issues, going by the few people I know that have a Freely TV and from other forums and articles on the net. One person I know that have a Freely, was saying the speed of changing the channel is slow, and the quality on some channels are not great, so he reset the set back to Freeeview only.
Articles and forums have people on about quality, certainly on some fast moving stuff, because of FPS and Frequency.
I watch everything online, no licence, so no live TV and I really don’t like the idea of waiting for something to come on before I can watch it these days. If I did ever go back to normal TV, it would be Freeview, not Freely.
@Ad47uk You could only go back to Freeview until 2034 (or whenever the final transmission date is decreed/agreed), and you may only be able to get BBC on Freeview until the end of 2030, which is the current Freeview HD multiplex licence agreement they have. And as an aside, Freesat may well be a thing of the past by the early 2030s as that is the satellite(s) operational lifespan and BBC and ITV currently only have agreements through to 2029 IIRC.
i had such high hopes for freely, but they wanted to reinvent the wheel.
Should just have been an app for google/fire/apple TV. if those devices are good enough for netflix/disney plus, then they should be good enough for the Freely.
@HR2Res, you really think Freeview will be gone by 2034? I can’t see it myself and the BBC c certainly will not be gone by 2030. Still too many people that don’t have decent broadband and unless things move very quickly they are not going to be able to get it it either. I know of people who still can’t get decent broadband speeds because they live in the sticks where network providers have no interest in. They only just about get mobile networks.
I doubt that will change in the next few years unless the government put money into it.
So don’t hold your breath, as I said above, we were told FM radio was going to vanish years ago, still going.
@Ali, At the start they said there would be no apps and not set top boxes of any sort as they wanted it built into TV sets. Then when the sales of Freely sets were not going so well, the decided they would allow set top boxes type units.
They want Freely to be the same as using Freeview, just tune on the TV and go to the channel.
Never going to be, certainly with ITV forcing people to have an ITVx account just to watch normal channels.
Some people may not want to do that.
Any levy should be on the industry looking to turn off DTT in order to save money, not consumers.
It’s not just to save money it’s so they can sell your viewing history to advertisers and make money off of you to through automatic content recognition that’s why every TV nowadays is a smart TV TV manufacturers make TVs at the same price it costs to produce them and then make profit from what you watch and sell your data
Would make TV viewing challenging when your FTTP goes down, and you are strung along for a month before its fixed.
I’ve had FTTP now for 7 years, never had my broadband go down in that time. Lucky? Who knows.
FTTP is pretty reliable, I have been using my provider for almost 3 years and yes, there was a couple of problems at the start, slow down and someone deciding to cut though a trunk fibre. Snce then it have been fine apart from when they said they were doing updates and there may be a short outage and that was done at times when must people would not notice.
A lot of the problems is not the services, but the equipment inside the house, my provider supplied routers that was not great, better now.
Saying all of that above even on FTTC for 9 years, I only had one major problem and I got around that by using a modem instead of a modem/router. It was only towards the end of my time with them I had some speed issues and I still think they done that to get me to move to FTTP.
So yes, broadband is pretty reliable these days, I use it for the majority of my video watching, the other less than 1% is via DVD/blueray
Be thankful you aren’t on FWA or 4G/5G for your broadband! Frequent loss of service for various reasons, from contention issues, to mast problems (think Tenby, but my locale has had masts go down for weeks), to regular and all too frequent maintenance (usually at midnight for anything ranging from 3 or 4 minutes to about 15 minutes sometimes), to leaf growth in the line of sight, to weather related issues (though to be fair one gets the latter with Freeview/Freesat as well).
We’ve had quite a number of FTTP outages.
The main issue for me is live sport, i am a sky stream customer and they have started pushing their more up to date live streams but the quality is poor still compared to the UHD channels. Till this is fixed/improved i can imagine a lot of die hard sport fans waiting to switch. I have to mute my phone every match as the goal alerts come though before its gone in on my screen!
This is the problem, Sky have end to end control of the broadcast including the device playing it back so you’d think they’d be more invested in trialling low latency options. The BBC have got it down to 6s behind live, which is probably as good as it will get and comparable to other broadcast methods if you take that 6s from the source.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/articles/2025-09-low-latency-streaming-trial
I have Sky Sports on NOW TV with the Ultra HD pack on my Samsung TV and the UHD quality is excellent so I am surprised that you’re finding it poor on Sky Stream.
NOW TV doesn’t have the ‘live sync’ option like Sky Stream. I wouldn’t be surprised if they dynamically degrade the picture quality to achieve the low latency and avoid buffering.
Big Dave,
I’m not saying the UHD is poor, it works perfectly, what is poor is the live sync version.
Main issue with UHD is the time delay
Well this was part of BT’s plans with their plan to change from copper to fibre in the early to mid 1990’s to offer the ability to the broadcasters a cost reduced means of delivering program content. Of course ‘competition’ became in the way and so instead of the UK leading we are now loosing.
Having been involved in Radio Engineering for some years the need for TV to free up some radio spectrum in the low UHF band is ever becoming more necessary. Yes I can see many people not wishing to change from what they have now; particularly with programme selection – the ‘Streaming Services’ presently aren’t what I’d describe as user friendly- i.e. to switch between say BBC and ITV streams means backing out of the BBC stream and selecting the ITV one.
I haven’t used Freely so maybe that is different.
With Freely it pretty much operates as Freeview does now. you push 1 for BBC1, 2 for BBC2 and so on & the channel change is pretty quick (within a couple of seconds). The only thing is you have to have an ITVX account to tune the ITV channels for some reason.
Well if they do this like they have done radio, then I expect it will be years before Freeview goes.
How many times have we been told that FM radio will vanish and yet here we are 2026 and still going., Good job really because DAB is still awful
There has been less urge to shutdown FM radio because the Band II frequencies do not have enough bandwidth to be useful for cellular. The real limitation is the age of the transmitter equipment which must now be well beyond it’s expected lifespan, even then if the national networks close FM may still carry on for local & community radio.
But how many years have it been since we were told FM was closing? you would have thought now, with many people listening to radio online they would have jumped at the chance to shut down Fm and save money, but nope, still going., Suits me, FM is better than DAB.
Yes, age is the problem, they must be getting on now the transmitters.
I think that Broadband should be free
and delivered by FTTP only
so that everyone can switchover easily
The Minimum should be 1Gps
like what Boris Johnson said
when he became Prime Minister
And who’s going to pay for everyone in the country to have free broadband?
@Retro
The Count of Dodgy Crypto… sorry… Farage’s Magic Money Universe?
Only those who don’t work or pay taxes will end up getting it for free (like everything else). Us taxpayers will no doubt pay for their broadband.
I think supermarkets should be free too because who cares about paying people to produce food and maintain telecoms networks. Too many Stalin followers
It seems to be Labour that thinks money grows on trees.
If they want everyone to have Freely or what ever it becomes, the they have to think of something with maybe a very limited broadband for those people who don’t want broadband.
They did not ask for their TV to be changed, so why should they have to pay a monthly fee, just to be able to watch it as well as the licence fee?
It may back fire and people will say stick it and not bother and the BBc will have less people paying for the TV licence. That depend on what is going to happen with the TV tax
No mention of Freesat end date. After Sky’s departure from Astra 28.2 east at the end of 2029 and the retirement of the current satellite. Bearing in mind this orbital position is used by African broadcasters and DAB distribution there could be the possibility of SES moving satellites around from 19 east or even a new one being launched. Especially now that SES owns Intelsat. Previously there was talk of a nightlight service on satellite after the closure of DTT. I enjoy fast forwarding advert breaks and Manhattan have just released a new Freesat over. I’d buy one if there was some confirmation of Freesat lasting beyond 2029. Hopefully this green paper addresses that and not just terrestrial.
Freesat is likely to end at the same time as Sky Q. Ringway Manchester has a video about it on his YouTube channel her:- https://youtu.be/H3Qg6exDBAI
Yeh, it’s 2026 and I still pay full price for Freeview lite.
Ofcom are just incompetent. Everything they touch is anti consumer and looking after their own and their mates interests.
Has anyone actually tried Freely.
I have and to be honest it is absolute garbage at the moment.
Constantly crashing (has to be uninstalled and reinstalled at least once a week).
If Freely is meant to be the future of TV, might as well forget about ‘live’ TV.
What device/TV are you using it on? I have the Manhattan box and I haven’t had a problem.
That is the sort of problems a few people I know that has it have had or has, and it is not just one make of TV. They have for the most part reset their TV back to Freeview and now don’t use Freely.
Hopefully Project Gigabit & the USO will have been sorted out by then. But before switching to IPTV Ofcom needs to sort out their speed reporting & legislation. There needs to be a minimum requirement for speed introduced not over an average of 24 hours but outright. We used to use Three 5g for broadband which saw us getting 300+Mbs in the middle of the night but as soon as the schools got out at 3:00pm that speed would drop to 3-4Mbs. They introduced the minimum speed guarantee for fixed lines but as we’ve seen with the dilution of the USO to include FWA that requirement needs to be spread wider to include “Other technologies” in order to ensure the solutions for the “Hardest to reach” actually provide a suitable connection.
Doesn’t starlink make coverage closer to 100%?
Just think how much VMO2 and BT (via Openreach charges to each ISP) can rack up the price per month once they know people are totally dependent on broadband for their TV…
As for Freely, far from impressed with crap encoding on non-BBC channels 1080i50 content forced to 1080p25 and BBC1 and BBC2 with a BBC logo always visible (because it comes from iPlayer distribution source for live tv). It was rushed to market and channels didn’t want to spend money and re-purposed streams already being used for live tv on their tv apps in case it was a failure. You can make the bit rate higher but if you lose the temporal motion through encoding choice or you add on screen logos that didn’t exist on Freeview/Freesat as described, then it’s not better in my view. It could have been, and could still be….
You’ve got a Netgem Pleio haven’t you? Can you manually set the output resolution on it 4K/50P? I can honestly tell you (apart from the onscreen graphics) on the Manhattan that it is every bit as good as Freeview HD if not slightly better.
Yep it’s 50p. BBC 1 and 2 are fine because the 1080i feed is deinterlaced into 50 frames by BBC before distribution which is the correct way to keep all the picture field information.
You’ll see the other broadcasters doing it wrong when text scrolls up or across the screen, or when its something in the studio like This Morning and presenter is waving their hands around when talking. The motion will be juddery. The netgem isn’t doing deinterlacing as feeds have to be progressive from source, not interlaced.
Freely is terrible. Limited number and channels and slow as hell compared to terrestrial TV. I can switch channels on freeview in the blink of an eye, Freely, it has to log you into the channel (or you have to set up yet another account), and then buffer enough to start the stream. It is absolutely dire, why would I switch. Yes, I have great broadband, but the Freely service is no comparison. Oh, and I can get freeview on my computer (with my TV adapter), with freely, the online version only allows even less, just tells you what’s on. That’s no blooming use to me.
It’s not a realistic timeframe. The earliest date should be 2045 and the commitment needs to be that every home has free basic cloud based internet by that time. They need to release how they intend to deal with people not having internet access at the same time as announcing when the deadline might be or people will panic. It’s more than possible to supply internet that only applies to TV programming, but we are unlikely to be sticking with ground based infrastructure by 2040, it’s not cost effective. Like the high street shop, we have known for 25 years that we are moving away from the traditional platforms. That doesn’t mean you don’t need shops, it means the type of shops you need are different and there won’t be as many of them. In the same way, internet isn’t going to be stuff in the ground and a lot of the stuff being created that might make internet TV a bigger thing will be completely redundant in 15 years. The issue with that is that how they currently broadcast is likely cheaper, better, easier and more sustainable….but someone always wants to reinvent the wheel
What about care homes. I know people in care home that can not afford broadband so how will that work for over 100 residents streaming at the same time on only one line if the care home pays for that
Also what about Holiday static sites (The likes of Haven, Butlins etc) most in remote location with little broadband coverage?
In Care homes a single licence is required for a community TV but if residents want a TV in their room they need a TV licence for it
Bob, People over 75 don’t pay licence. It still
Need to pay for broadband which many can not afford .
I agree with others who say Freely is not the answer.
We bought a new TV late last year. I emphasised to the salesperson that we must get Freeview, and was reassured over and over again. Of course once we got it home and setup it was Freely, not Freeview.
My better half is the TV person and she was extremely unhappy with it. As others have said, changing channel seemed to result in a noticeable delay. Which I put down to being the internet service rather than the over-the-air service.
It was so bad we went to Richer Sounds just a month later and bought a replacement from them. Proper Freeview, works well.
I’m also concerned about the situation with the large number of people who will have problems dealing with an internet service.
My father was in no way technically challenged, but I remember in his later years I got him a new TV and showed him all the extra channels available on Freeview, but he didn’t use it like I thought he would. It’s a fact though that most people in later life have difficulty learning something new, especially when it’s “technical”. Those old ladies mentioned above are just not going to get to watch their soaps again.
You do know you can set the TV for Freeview only, you will have to reset it, but when you set it up, you can set it for Freeview only.
The other way is not to connect it to the router when you set it up, it will not be able to set up Freely then.
What make and model is it?
None of these new services provide the ability to record, as far as I can tell.
Is this capability being withdrawn because of legal/licensing reasons, or because of a perceived lack of interest by users?
This user prefers to record so that the program can be viewed again at the users convenience, and not be dependant on the streaming service.
You have to wonder about these people, sometimes don’t you. Becoming totally reliant on ‘one method’ of media delivery, for our critical information delivery could be the biggest blunder in living memory. We’re moving into more uncertain, times not less. It’s almost like they are setting us up for failure. We have, multiple methods of media delivery, and redundancy at present for a reason, a very good reason. Throwing that all away for cost convenience reasons, could be the undoing of us all. These people need a serious wake-up call, before it’s too late, for all of us…
If DTT is shutdown there will still be broadband, mobile data, satellite data, radio and of course paper media. It wasn’t even that long ago all there was was terrestrial TV, radio and the newspapers. During the last war there was radio and newspapers and not everybody even had a radio. I think we will cope!
john_r – Broadband, Mobile data, & Satellite data, are all Paid services and thus, Not availablle to all, FM & AM radio are allso going the way off the dodo. So many peoples information resources, will be becoming seriously limited. It’s not great whatever way, you choose to look, at it…
You need to pay £15 a month to watch DTT so it’s not free either. If being free is the standard then only radio doesn’t require an ongoing payment after buying the receiving equipment.AM may be dead but FM is still going strong and DAB will be around for decades to come.
Another 10 years and will be basically impossible to live without some kind of internet service – it will be as essential as electricity. TV will only be part of it.
Just give the vulnerable users who can’t afford it broadband for free. The marginal cost would be minimal as the infrastructure will be there anyway. It’s probably a lot less than free bus passes.
Meaning the government would pay the ISPs?
It would have to be a very basic service, no landline. Speeds of 12-30 (ADSL/early VDSL) otherwise people would get annoyed about others getting broadband for free while they have to pay.
And thus free TV is no more, for you have to pay for internet access. And I feel sorry for those who only have poor internet service, no consideration for them.
Yes it will have a devastaing impact on my brother-inlaw farmer, located at the end of a rural farm track with download speeds less than 5Mbs- sometimes as low as 2Mbs
OpenReach quoted a few years ago £30k to provide Fibre, not an option
@Suffolk – Starlink
There’s no such thing as “free TV”. You have to pay a TV licence to watch or record live programmes.. and the cost for that license is getting ever higher each year.
I got Pleio from BRSK. It works ok most of the time although I find C4 can be troublesome. Ive also been told by Youfibre that they dont intend keeping support for Pleio so I will lose it at the end of my contract, or with immediate effect if I change my contract by upgrading for example. Freely should be put out as a standalone App imo.
Unfortunately we live in a country where the government and large companies want to make as much money whilst hood winking public into less services. No advantage to freely at all other than a easy install of a extra TV.
Very true,
Do you think the private company that operates the transmitters Freeview uses let them be used free of charge?
This is mostly about freeing up some radio spectrum, not money.
The streamers don’t have huge costs of 1000 transmitters across the UK and satellite uplinks as well as channel slot costs for epg to contend with.
This is a consequence of American streamers entering the market as they dont have these overheads.
Remember coffee was cheap in a cafe like 18p before Starbucks arrived, and 10 jam doughnuts for 99p before Krispy Kreme arrived and charged £1 per doughnut. Obviously they are much more expensive now.
My mother doesn’t understand how to use the smart options on her telly. She has dementia and lives on her own. The DAB signal for her radio is non existent too, this will really shut people like her off from things even more.
With my Freeview recorder I can skip the ads if I want to – something you cant do with streaming. Generally I have found streaming apps on all my devices pretty dire compared to using my Humax Youview recorder. Trying to get back to a point where you were watching previously is a nightmare. BBC Iplayer picture quality is ok but I only tend to watch 4K content.
Echoing Clyde123 (18th 17:52) and Andy (19th, 09:43)- there is a huge (and growing) number of people in a similar situation. It took 68 comments for someone to discuss it even though Mark himself brings up the 2024 report.
Reading the other comments, it seems even the techies are coping by sagely swapping advice on how/when to reset/reconfigure Freely/Freeview/Pleio on any given connection over fibre, co-ax, FWA, or superannuated copper long-lines. Following their considered and totally consistent advice, the TV is satisfactory if you can “just hold it right”, and don’t mind coping with rescans requiring re-inhibiting the extra-subscription channels: you only need to battle with the myriad buttons on the latest remote to fight your way through the revised menu options since the last firmware update.
OfCom has taken two years to go from identifying a problem to, now, saying “we expect other people to resolve this because we want to shut down DTT”.
Let’s admit the last twenty-plus years have made TV, as a medium, into a vibrant marketplace of
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