The digital switchover as an information society initiative: The role of public policy in promoting access to digital ICTs

Abstract

The switchover to digital communications was launched as a major information society policy initiative across Europe, and was expected to be a key contributor to the spreading of internet access across all households. More than a decade after its introduction, and as the digital switchover is well-underway, digital television (DTV) is not delivering the promise of interactivity for all. Drawing on the principle of universal access as a politically determined and technologically bound concept, this article assesses the role of public policy in expanding and promoting the diffusion of new media technologies. More specifically, it reviews policy developments in the UK in order to examine the making of DTV as a universally available technology for broadcast transmissions; the lack of a commitment to support access to interactive services; and implications for end-users.

Introduction

Digital television (DTV) has been heralded across Europe as the gateway to the information society (IS), variously expected to be a key contributor to improvements in spreading internet access (Cabinet Office, 1999, Cabinet Office, 2002a, Cabinet Office, 2002b, CEC, 2002). DTV’s potential of interactive capability was expected to offer a new, more inclusive way of enabling connectivity in the home. Television, a universally available, familiar and trusted technology, would bring ‘the net into the box’ with the potential for much broader household penetration than the personal computer. This paper probes the diffusion of digital television and interactive services in the UK, where a regulatory framework for DTV was introduced in 1996, the policy objective to implement the switchover to an all-digital broadcasting environment was announced in 1999, and Action Plans for digital television and for the electronic delivery of government information and public services were launched in 2001.

On reading national policy documents it can be seen how digital television had been conceptualised in ambitious terms (Freedman, 2008, p. 173). DTV presented a promise to offer new interactive services that expanded consumer choice, a means to achieve social/welfare policy objectives and realise industrial benefits, an instrument for facilitating social and political renewal and a remedy for the so-called ‘digital divide’. In 1995 DTV was seen as the technology that ‘for many people’ would ‘provide their first experience of the full potential of the information superhighways’ (DNH, 1995, p. 1). In 2002, the government-sponsored website on the digital switchover was informing the public that ‘when the analogue transmissions are switched off, everyone who has a telephone and a television set will have access to the internet’.¹ The UK Cabinet Office was still placing emphasis on the social benefits of DTV, describing it as ‘a key channel for pervasive and inclusive delivery of government services’ (Cabinet Office, 2002b). In the following year a policy framework outlined the government’s vision that ‘DTV becomes a means to provide all citizens with access to e-government services’, recommending using the strengths of this medium to deliver ‘richer services and inclusiveness’ (Cabinet Office, 2003, p. 3). However, by 2005, when the transition to digital television was underway, DTV was no longer defined as an interactive technology but, rather, as a technology for broadcast transmissions. Claims made by the government did not refer to wider social benefits associated with online, interactive services. As identified in a more recent report by the UK National Audit Office, the benefits of the digital switchover are ‘the increased choice of channels available to viewers on terrestrial television’ (NAO, 2008, p. 16). In stark contrast to earlier policy expectations, digital broadcasting has not, in fact, widened household access to the internet. DTV is not becoming a ubiquitous platform to access interactive services, a key channel to access e-public services and a technology to ‘tackle’ social exclusion.

This article sets out to investigate policy developments surrounding the emergence of DTV as a universally available platform for linear, broadcast transmissions. In doing so the paper examines the role of public policy in expanding and promoting DTV as a particular IS information and communication technology (ICT) in light of the normative value of media access. The concept of universal access can ground the assessment of the digital switchover and the newly announced (at the time of writing) policy aim for universal availability of broadband connectivity in a consideration of their political–economic imperatives and social consequences. In the following discussion the aim of the first section is twofold: firstly, to introduce universal access to communications as a technologically bound and politically defined concept. Secondly, to locate the digital switchover in the broader political–economic context of the diffusion of the IS policy agenda. The second section proceeds with an overview of the diffusion of DTV in UK households, which has been centrally sponsored in order to manage the digital switchover, given a commitment to achieving universal access to digital broadcasting. These developments are subsequently contrasted with the lack of joined up policy initiatives to improve household penetration of internet access. The article concludes with a discussion of the digital switchover as an illustration of the role of public policy in defining and reflecting shifting realities in media access, related tensions in policy thinking and implications for end users.