A national federation of condo management associations will ask the central government to help cover the cost of ensuring adequate reception of terrestrial digital broadcasting services, which have been blocked by condos and other high-rise buildings, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.

The federation estimates that reception at about 1 million households will be affected by 2011, when the digital service will have completely replaced the current analog system. The government, therefore, has asked the owners of these buildings to take measures to alleviate the problem.

However, the Kyoto-based federation has opposed the request on behalf of its 3,200 member associations, saying the new digital broadcasting service was introduced by the government, and the burden on condo residents would be unreasonable.

According to the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, about 10 million households are inconvenienced by unclear television reception and other problems because analog radio waves are blocked or deflected by high-rises.

To help solve the problem, antennas have been installed atop buildings and broadcasts are relayed to the households suffering poor reception via cable.

Based on a 1976 directive by the now defunct Posts and Telecommunications Ministry, high-rises that cause reception problems are required to install the antennas at the expense of their developers and are to be managed and maintained by their management associations.

The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry estimated that 1 million households would suffer poor reception under the new service, although it is less likely that the digital signal will be deflected by buildings.

The first survey conducted from January to March in Tokyo and three neighboring prefectures showed 19 of 151 locations that had received poor analog reception had similar problems with the digital service. In some cases, no signal at all was transmitted to the television.

The ministry proposed in November that the cost to prevent the interference or renovate current facilities be shared by the building owners as well as those suffering poor reception. The ministry also proposed that building owners survey areas where complaints about reception had been reported.

Meanwhile, the federation has pointed out that some of the measures could cost several million yen and has claimed that renovating cables, surveys and removing obsolete facilities should be paid for by the government since it decided to introduce the new service.

Source

This entry was posted on Monday, July 23rd, 2007 at 8:49 am and is filed under Condo, Real Estate. Tags: communications Condo Japan Kyoto telecommunications Tokyo . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.