• Arqiva begins Digital Switch Over engineering work in Border region
• First stage in £500m broadcast engineering project
• New 337 metre high mast to be built at the Caldbeck site

Arqiva today announced that it has started work at the Caldbeck and Selkirk television masts, the first sites to be re-engineered as part of Digital Switch Over (DSO).  DSO will see TV services in the UK go completely digital, TV region by TV region, starting in 2008.  A government-mandated national programme, DSO is the biggest, most complex broadcast engineering project of its kind ever to be carried out and will see the UK's entire terrestrial television infrastructure - which took 30 years to build - replaced or upgraded by 2012.

While more than two thirds of UK homes currently have digital TV¹, a lack of spectrum means that a quarter of UK households are unable to receive digital TV through a roof-top aerial.  DSO will deliver full-power digital TV signals from all transmission sites allowing almost everyone in the UK to benefit from Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT).  DSO will also release spectrum, currently being used for analogue TV services that could enable a wider range of broadcasting services, such as mobile TV and High Definition TV (HDTV) on DTT.  By rolling out digital TV across the UK and making the most of the available spectrum to deliver innovative technologies, DSO will ensure that the UK continues to be a world leader in broadcasting.

The Caldbeck and Selkirk masts serve the Border region, the first region to be switched over to digital in 2008. To prepare for the switch over, Arqiva will construct a new 337 metre high mast at the Caldbeck site, making it the third tallest structure in the UK, and the first major television mast to be built by the company for 35 years. The new digital transmitting antennas will be installed at Selkirk in 2006 and at Caldbeck in 2008.

Steve Holebrook, Arqiva's managing director of Terrestrial Media Solutions, said: "DSO is a wide-ranging and complex project and, whilst viewers won't begin to see the benefits until 2008, the engineering work is now underway.  DSO will deliver DTT to 98.5% of the population and free up spectrum that could enable new broadcast services, such as mobile TV and HDTV on Freeview, to be delivered to UK viewers. "

¹ Ofcom, Communications Market: Digital Progress Report, 7 June 2006