USA digital television cutover sends thousands to their phones

The dig­i­tal tele­vi­sion (DTV) cutover in the United States finally hap­pened yes­ter­day (12 June 2009). The FCC reports that over 700,000 calls have been received at 1–888-CALL-FCC and other hot­lines. Web sites like http://www.dtv.gov/ have been flooded with users, too. Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, New York City, Philadel­phia and Boston gen­er­ated the most call volume.

The DTV cutover hap­pened here in Hawaii on 15 Jan­u­ary 2009, and has been hap­pen­ing in stages across the USA since then. Calls about how to use DTV con­verter boxes accounted for 30% of the calls. Another 20% of the calls con­cerned re-scanning issues. When the cutover hap­pened, some con­verter boxes needed to find the DTV chan­nels again.

See this Asso­ci­ated Press arti­cle called Dig­i­tal TV hot line gets 700,000 calls over switch for more details.

New ser­vices

The cutover finally allows US busi­nesses to offer new telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices based on DTV. The Wall Street Jour­nal men­tions Qualcomm’s FLO TV, a ser­vice that lets Ver­i­zon and AT&T mobile users in 39 US cities watch live tele­vi­sion on high-end mobile phones. Both mobile car­ri­ers will get access to the old ana­log tele­vi­sion chan­nels, which will be used to expand mobile band­width and improve data speeds.

See Busi­ness Oppor­tu­ni­ties Open Up With US Dig­i­tal TV Shift and this SFGate arti­cle called FLO TV finally comes to the Bay Area after DTV tran­si­tion for more details.

Image cour­tesy of craig1black on flickr through a Cre­ative Com­mons license.

Related pages and posts on billso.com

• Dig­i­tal television
• 15 Jan­u­ary 2009: Hawaii’s move to dig­i­tal TV sur­prises some residents
• 15 Decem­ber 2008: All day dig­i­tal TV test in Hawaii
• 31 May 2008: Adver­tis­ers wor­ried about dig­i­tal television conversion
• 16 May 2008: Want to test your dig­i­tal tele­vi­sion in Hawaii?
• 25 March 2008: Dig­i­tal TV is coming
• 18 Jan­u­ary 2008: Dig­i­tal TV and business models
• 12 Novem­ber 2007: I want a bet­ter tele­vi­sion — but it’s not ready yet
• 12 Sep­tem­ber 2007: The Google Phone and the iPhone – both look­ing for soft­ware and spectrum
• 5 July 2004: San Diego Padres promote HDTV

Tagged as: at&t, bandwidth, dtv, flo, hdtv, mobile, television, USA, Verizon