At800 Name UK Areas Most At Risk of TV Loss Due to 4G Mobile Launch

at800.tv has recently published an indicative list of areas in the United Kingdom, which are potentially at risk of losing their Digital Terrestrial TV (DTTV) services when the new generation of superfast 4G based Mobile Broadband services begin to go live in the 800MHz band over the coming weeks or months.

The group, which was setup with £180m from Mobile Network Operators (MNO) to help support homes that are most at risk of disruption and where terrestrial TV services are used as the “primary viewing” method (i.e. not cable or satellite TV), has recently been conducting a large number of trials to assess the problem.

However the trials have so far enabled at800.tv to predict that only 90,000 homes across the United Kingdom could suffer problems when the 800MHz based 4G services go live (here), which is significantly less than the original prediction of 900,000 (about 1% of UK households).

The latest list thus reflects the Freeview mast areas that are most at risk of such disruption, although it warns that only a small number of homes within each area might actually be affected. Anybody that DOES NOT live near any of the cities, towns or other listed areas shouldn’t worry as at800.tv said that “4G at 800 MHz is not able to disrupt your television signal“.

UK Mast Areas at Risk of Freeview Disruption

• London and areas around the M25, including Slough, St Albans, Guildford (plus some parts of south east London)
• Birmingham
• Brighton
• Bristol
• Coventry
• Edinburgh
• Glasgow and Paisley
• Leeds and Bradford
• Leicester
• Manchester
• Merseyside
• Newbury
• Newcastle upon Tyne
• Nottingham
• Sheffield
• Areas and towns in Surrey, West Sussex, East Sussex and Kent
• York

At present only a tiny number of areas are testing the 800MHz based service (it hasn’t officially gone live yet). But once it does go live then anybody whom feels that their TV service has been directly disrupted are advised to contact at800.tv – https://at800.tv/contact/ . In some cases people may need to install a special filter to tackle the problem and at800.tv can supply those.