The Chilean Government, through the Subsecretaria de Telecomunicaciones (Subtel), entity in charge of controlling and supervising  the telecommunications market in the country, announced its decision to reject the request made by FTA TV channels to put the analog blackout off in the country by 2026. This way, and as reported by the entity, the DTT migration must be completed on April 15th, 2024 in the country.

Despite the request being rejected, Decree N° 50 was published on July 2nd, which changes the previously established deadlines for the analog blackout’s implementation in Chile. The new schedule is divided into four steps, and sets December 15th, 2021 as the deadline to complete the first of them, which establishes that by that date the DTT migration must be completed in all regional capitals. Later, by December 15th, 2022, the analog blackout must take place in 50% of the provincial capitals, to complete this stage on December 15th, 2023. The final step was established on April 15th, 2024, by which the DTT migration must take place in the whole country. 

‘It is expected that this measure may allow FTA broadcasters  to plan and prevent the tasks that allow them to timely deploy the technology that enables the rapid  DTT implementation in the country, with all the benefits that it features for citizens, reports the Decree.

Initially, the analog blackout was planned to take place in Chile in 2020. However, the Chilean Government confirmed that the DTT migration in the country would be postponed until 2024, setting greater demands for TV channels to implement the migration. According to the specialized website Pisapapeles, the FTA TV channel that achieves the best progress in this issue  is Chilevision, followed by Canal 13, TVN, Mega, TV+ and La Red.