Dear Sirs,

Regarding 'Digital TV', I live in Kent, the local TV transmitter is on the opposite side of the valley, barely 3 miles away.    In direct visual line of site from my aerial, mounted on the chimney stack.

But according to the 'Freeview' postcode inquiry webpage we cannot receive digital TV, yet houses, about 100 yards down the road almost the same distance from the transmitter, but a different postcode can receive digital TV, receiving most if not all available channels, including radio.

Nevertheless my daughter & son-in-law bought us a 'digibox' which I connected & was surprised to find we could receive about 35 digital TV & radio channels.    Although the signal reliability is very variable from day to day.

Mainly BBC channels, + Channel 5, the History Channel, Sky & a few others.    We cannot receive any ITV channels.

As we are in a Telewest Eurobell (Analogue) cable area, there is apparently no foreseeable likelihood of the service.
I actually telephoned Telewest Eurobell Customer Service for an update & was told that they have "Problems with the cabling in the Kent area" & that there was no likelihood of a digital capable network in the foreseeable future.

Which we already know, in fact they had to do some emergency work on the telephone part of the network in this area quite recently.    This part of the T/Eurobell network is barely 3 years old, put in whilst Eurobell was owned by Deutches Telecom who had been trying to sell it for several years.    In fact the telephone part of the network failed almost immediately after it was installed & activated, as did part of the television network reception in this area.    It was out of action for about 2 weeks, I fortunately had retained my BT line.

Sky Digital is not an option that I would even consider, not wishing to pay in the region of £38-£40 for television content that is generally deteriorating in quality by the day, week & month.    From all providers.

In conclusion, since the BBC have been running 'Freeview', after buying it from ITV it has marginally improved for under ITV & OnDigital it was generally known in the area that a reasonable signal was virtually unobtainable at that time.    Even though certain well known High Street TV retailers were selling the digiboxes to unsuspecting customers.

So how the government think that they will be able to 'turn off' the analogue service quite soon I find difficult to equate with the shortcomings & limitations of the existing technology.

In fact it is well known in technical circles that high quality analogue TV is vastly superior to digital TV, which is of course very subject to bandwidth limitations.

Need I say, (write) more

Regards, AFH