Digital terrestrial television in Canada

Digital terrestrial television in Canada (often shortened to DTT) is transmitted using the ATSC standard. Because Canada and the U.S. use the same standard and frequencies for channels, people near the Canada–United States border can watch digital television programming from television stations in either country where available. The ATSC standards are also used in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Suriname, and South Korea.

Jurisdiction over terrestrial broadcasting in Canada is primarily regulated by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). ISED has jurisdiction over the allotment of the terrestrial spectrum and the CRTC has jurisdiction over the allotment of broadcast licences.

The CRTC imposed in 28 mandatory markets a digital transition deadline for full power transmitters of 31 August 2011, with the exception of some CBC transmitters. Two weeks before the deadline, the CBC transmitters were given a temporary one-year extension to remain in analogue. No digital transition deadline has been set for low-power analogue transmitters and analogue transmitters outside the 28 mandatory markets.

In January 2007, ISED stopped issuing licences within Canada for new television transmitters broadcasting in analogue. All remaining analogue terrestrial television signals across Canada were scheduled to be shut down no later than 2022 under an ISED schedule published in 2017; however, a number of analogue stations in smaller markets continue to operate as of December 2022.

History

The digital television transition in Canada and the United States will result in spectrum on channels 52 to 69 being re-allocated for other purposes. The United States government already auctioned most of this spectrum and Canada is planning on doing the same. The United States government, using some proceeds of the spectrum auction, funded an education campaign in advance of the transition, provided subsidies to many broadcasters in support of transitioning to digital, and provided subsidies to consumers for digital to analogue converter boxes. In contrast, the Canadian government did not provide any similar funding in support of the digital television transition. The Canadian government's most visible efforts to support the public in the transition to digital over-the-air television has been in the form of a website, along with some newspaper, radio, and television advertisements in the month leading up to the transition deadline.

Engineering firm Spectrum Expert Inc. estimated a total cost to Canadian broadcasters of $378-425 million to convert all 738 Canadian full-power television transmitters to DTV on their newly assigned channels; if the 1238 low-power transmitters were converted, costs would increase further. Some of the highest costs were for existing full-power VHF rebroadcast transmitters that would have to be replaced by new UHF facilities in locations far from broadcast studios. As a worst case, CTV- owned CJOH-TV-6 and CJOH-TV-8 were estimated at a conversion cost of over four million dollars each. While CTV had threatened to shut down a long list of these full-power rebroadcasters on August 31, 2009, the transmitters are still on the air.

Several broadcasters, including the CBC, argued that there is no viable business case for a comprehensive digital conversion strategy in Canada. Converting a transmitter to digital has upfront capital equipment costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, which can in more extreme cases reach over a million dollars, though some cost recovery in energy costs is possible due to lower transmission power required to cover an area as compared to analogue, if the same channel is used. At CRTC hearings in 2007 on the future direction of regulatory policy for television, broadcasters proposed a number of strategies, including funding digital conversion by eliminating restrictions on the amount of advertising that television broadcasters are permitted to air, allowing terrestrial broadcasters to charge cable viewers a subscription fee (fee-for-carriage) similar to that already charged by cable specialty channels, permitting licence fees similar to those that fund the BBC
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