Any time now, a small and obscure group of senior TV engineers will put the finishing touches to an equally obscure technical document which, in all likelihood, will have the unintended effect of preventing the poorest sectors of British society from gaining full access to government online services.
The development has its origins in the commercial failure of ITV Digital in the UK, after which the British government awarded a contract for transmission of digital terrestrial television (DTT) signals to a BBC, BSkyB and Crown Castle consortium named Freeview, which promised to make digital TV free to anyone with a ‘set-top box’ or digital TV receiver. The service began in November, and is now seen as the most important player in ensuring the government meets its target for switching off analogue television signals before the end of the decade.
The TV engineers mentioned above are members of The Digital Network (TDN), an informal group representing the companies who operate the so-called multiplexes (digital frequency groupings) which transmit the Freeview service. The document they are drafting, in consultation with the UK’s digital TV industry association, the Digital Television Group (DTG), is the basic technical specification for Freeview receivers. Manufacturers of equipment that meets that specification will be able to carry the Freeview brand in promotional and point-of-sale material, providing they fulfil additional conditions laid down by Freeview’s marketing arm, DTV Services Ltd.
And here is the problem: the specification in question will not require these receivers to have internal modems – or even a connector for one.
To understand why lack of modems in Freeview receivers could have such apparently disastrous implications for the government’s already battered UK Online initiative, you need to be aware of the role digital TV is supposed to play within it.
The supposed benefits of digital TV
The British government’s broad objectives are (a) to ensure that everyone who wants to can access the internet by 2005, and (b) to deliver all government services electronically by 2005.
But, as the government eloquently points out in UK Online’s annual report for 2002:
[Internet] take-up among the most disadvantaged groups in society – those on low incomes, the elderly and people with disabilities – is lower. These groups are traditionally heavy users of public services and potentially have most to gain from convenient, customer-focused channels of electronic delivery. Services like benefit applications, access to health records and GP appointment bookings will all be available online. But without access to the internet or the skills to use it confidently, these groups may face further social exclusion.
The government has seized on digital TV as the way to bridge the divide between the digitally connected and the digitally deprived. In the words of the Office of the E-envoy, whose task it is to deliver the government’s online strategy, “interactivity and internet access on digital television present us with a tremendous opportunity to bridge the digital divide, to uphold social inclusion and give all of us an opportunity to join the emerging information society from the comfort of our homes.”
Let’s ignore for the moment that neither satellite nor cable TV currently give access to the internet, as such. Both platforms do offer a ‘return-path’ (that is, a way to send messages back to service providers) which allows viewers to carry out transactions through their TV set. In principal, these platforms could be used to allow subscribers to do things like vote, renew their TV licences, apply for benefits, and so on – exactly the type of service the government has prioritised in its UK online initiative.
Unfortunately, satellite and cable will never provide universal access. According to Inside Digital TV’s calculations, there were just over 8.5 million digital satellite and cable homes at the end of 2002, equivalent to around 35 per cent of UK TV homes. Many forecasters assume the market for the type of pay-TV package they offer is nearing saturation.
That leaves Freeview, which, according to industry figures, was in well over one million UK TV homes by Christmas. On some estimates, nine million households could have access to its free 30-channel service within five years. If anything can make digital TV an affordable reality for the ‘digitally dispossessed’, Freeview is it. There’s no subscription to pay, and in a matter of a few years, it’s likely that the equipment you need to buy will cost no more than ten pounds.
But the TDN receiver specification means that a substantial proportion of Freeview receivers – probably the majority – will not include a return path. Few manufacturers will choose to include a modem if it’s not mandatory, especially when they are all fighting to keep the price of their Freeview receivers to a minimum. Indeed, of the twenty or so set-top boxes mentioned in www.idtv.co.uk’s recent survey of Freeview decoders, only one (Netgem’s i-Player) has an integrated modem, and it costs at least £30 more than most of the rest.
Andy Townend, the BBC’s controller of distribution, is also, as it happens, the chair at TDN meetings. He says that, eventually, there may be a second, higher-tier specification directed at this type of box, which might include a modem, although it’s clear that no manufacturer is going to be forced to follow it.
No modem, no return path, no access
Shouldn’t we be concerned about the secretive way in which unaccountable people are making decisions which are completely at odds with government public policy? No member of the public has access to the drafting process, which is being kept confidential. It even appears that members of TDN and DTG are under strict instructions to prevent journalists like myself from inspecting the various draft specifications.
Equally worrying is the way the present government seems to be willing the ends, but not the means, to achieve its ‘UK Online’ policy. Clearly, it is a direct implication of the online targets it has set itself that all DTV receivers should include a return path – so why wasn’t the Independent Television Commission instructed to make that a condition of its award of the DTT contract to Freeview?
Dermot Nolan, a director of Telecommunications and Broadcast Services, a well-known digital terrestrial consultancy, is dismissive about the TDN/DTG standards-setters, and accuses them of “only thinking about it from a broadcasting perspective: they’re not thinking about it in the round.”
He also points out the apparent absurdity of a body on which the BBC is so prominently represented promulgating a standard which doesn’t include an online component. “The whole thrust of BBC public policy, from its platform-neutrality through to its Digital Learning initiative, militates in favour of the inclusion of a return path [in Freeview decoders],” he says.
As Sian Kevill, head of the BBC’s New Politics Initiative (and recent contributor to openDemocracy’s debate on e-democracy), put it at last November’s ‘e-summit’: “Digital TV is another really important path. […] It’s very attractive because digital TV actually gets to some of these lower socio-economic groups that you are not going to get through the internet.”
For all that, Nolan is optimistic that the market will lead where the bureaucrats won’t, pointing out that including a modem only costs a manufacturer about five dollars extra. “I think a number of commercial interests will probably bring out more advanced boxes,” he declares, arguing that, “there are very sound commercial reasons for doing it. Those boxes can be monetised, and the other thing is that a number of commercial broadcasters will want to have [an] interactive [version] of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire.” As BSkyB has shown in the digital satellite sphere, answering quizzes and voting by dialling a premium phone-line can be a lucrative business.
Even if Nolan is right, it’s unlikely that these more highly-specified units will ever account for a majority of the Freeview decoder market – and certainly not by 2005. There are already 500,000-plus ‘non-modem’ boxes out there, and their numbers are growing at around 30,000 a week.
Given that boxes with a return-channel are likely to be more expensive units of the Netgem type, they are unlikely to be the preferred choice of the less well-off. Yet this sector of the population is, by common consent, precisely that which would have most to gain from decoders which provide an online link to government transactional services, since they are the least likely to own a PC.
No doubt, the modem-free households should in time be able to access information about interactive services. These kind of data could be broadcast alongside the Freeview channels and decoded by special software in the receiver, since TDN is prepared, it seems, to mandate at least this limited type of interactivity.
But doing something like filling in a form online and sending it to the relevant government office – precisely the type of activity e-government is supposed to facilitate – will not be possible for them.
Now, I should stress that I, like many others, am highly sceptical that the UK administration will hit its targets for putting all its services online. But I do believe there should one day be an affordable infrastructure put in place so that even people without PCs could, in principle, access the internet or whatever e-government services were available to them. Digital TV could have provided it. Now it won’t.
Ironically, the 800,000 or so former ITV Digital subscribers who didn’t throw their boxes away when the company went bust last year turn out to be the lucky ones – because ITV Digital, unlike Freeview, had the foresight to mandate the inclusion of a modem in its decoders.
