Don't go to Switzerland

Quote: TheCesspit

The airwaves are free, the TV's are licenced. .

Then they aren't free, are they. It's
like the bars in some parts of the
country. They charge you $5 for
the mixer (Coke, water, whatever)
but the liquor is 'free'. No it's not.

Quote: Nareed

It's as ridiculous as charging for frequencies (there's no such thing as "airways").

But I believe this is a rather common practice in Europe. It was, or is, a common practice in Israel. I recall my aunt there telling me how people declared less sets than they owned, and for years hardly anyone admitted to owning a color set (can you imagine B&W TV???)

Bandwidth is limited. Now, the question on how you decide who can transmit on which bandwidth is a question of economics and politics, I suppose. You wouldn't want it to be a free for all (no-one would benefit) and you may want to reserve some bandwidth for emergency services, air traffic control and other things.

The rest... well... those socialistic Europeans have carved it up and sold it off to the highest bidders (in some cases) or reserved it for use by national broadcasters. The FCC in the US does much the same thing, and I presume they charge for the licences to use the space.

The oddity in the UK (and other places, I guess) is that you -have- to pay for the receiver licence every year, whether you watch the BBC or not. The licence, as I recall, covers the entire household. Yes, black and white licences were cheaper, when they existed. And TV licences for the blind were also cheaper....

Quote: Evenbob

Then they aren't free, are they. It's
like the bars in some parts of the
country. They charge you $5 for
the mixer (Coke, water, whatever)
but the liquor is 'free'. No it's not.

The cell phone is free, but you pay for monthly service contract and the apps.
The printer is free, but you pay for paper and ink cartridges.

Quote: zippyboy

The cell phone is free, but you pay for monthly service contract and the apps.
The printer is free, but you pay for paper and ink cartridges.

The airwaves here are free. Period.

Quote: Evenbob

The airwaves here are free. Period.

The US government sells bandwith all the time. The companies that buy it build the cost into what the consumer pays. It is hidden but you pay EB.

Quote: Fleastiff

The zurich central bank will no longer have a cap on the exchange rate so the Swiss Franc rose and Turkish and Polish currencies fell. Many polish mortgages are denominated in Swiss Francs, after all who wants a Zloty?

I was using the TV license as an example of how expensive things are in Switzerland. But my example is what most people cued in on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence
Half of the countries in Asia and Africa, and two-thirds of the countries in Europe use television licences to fund public television.

You have to pay the tax if you watch on a television, on your phone, if you are a college student. If you watch on the internet you must pay the tax if you watch show at the same time as they are broadcast over the air in the UK.

BBC iPlayer
http://www.bbc.com/news/
You can sign up if you don't live in the UK, but you are restricted to news. You can't watch BBC programs. Many US citizens would be happy to pay $220 a year to be able to watch the standard British TV real time. BBCAmerica requires a cable subscription and a tier of service above the basic level.

Certainly there are standards for televisions sold in the USA. In 1961, the Fcc required that all TV's sold in the USA be able to tune in UHF stations, because manufacturers saved costs by only having VHF tuners which were much cheaper. The Fcc wanted to give UHF stations a chance. Today TV's sold in the USA must have two types of tuners, ATSC for over the air digital broadcasts, and QAM for unencrypted cable TV (which is almost nonexistent today).

In the UK the requirements are much stricter in order to receive "over the air" high definition TV. Since the UK is 20% of the size of the market of the USA, their TV equipment is much more expensive. The government also builds far more broadcast towers, so that most of the population gets good reception. So in the UK 85% of the population gets "terrestrial TV" (British English for "over the air"). The number is debated in the USA but it is closer to 12%-15% that use antennas as primary source of signals. Now only 45% of the UK households only use antennas. Satellite is very popular there to supplement basic TV (called Freeview).



Switzerland pays the highest TV license tax in the world. Their public TV is equal in German, French, and Italian (and a few shows are broadcast in Romansch). As you can imagine it is difficult to produce TV in three languages for an country of only 8 million people. Unlike the UK the overwhelming majority of people who get public TV also pay for cable or satellite.

Quote: kenarman

The US government sells bandwith all the time. The companies that buy it build the cost into what the consumer pays. It is hidden but you pay EB.

I'm talking about radio and TV. We
don't pay for broadcast TV and radio.
I heard it in my car today and was
charged nothing.

Quote: Evenbob

I heard it in my car today and was charged nothing.

I think "kenarman" means you pay for it with your time spent listening to advertisements. If you don't want advertisements you must purchase a commercial product. You can argue that the $92 you spend on Netflix give you more pleasure than the government approved BBC programs that they spend $220 on every year.

The other thing is that the commercial industry has little interest in saturating the country with good antenna signals. The BBC has over 1100 broadcast towers in the UK. The USA has 1300 full power TV stations, but many of them either share a broadcast tower, or all of the stations broadcast from an antenna field. There is not much interest in building hundreds of translators to get a signal into all the valleys that have poor reception.

Can someone from the UK sneak in a TV from France and watch TV for free?

The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standards are used in the following coutnries.

Canada, USA, and Mexico (next year), South Korea, and some smaller countries. Sales of such TV's are over 32 million per year in the USA alone. But an ATSC tv will not work outside of these countries.

In the UK all TV's must be compatible with standards set by a non profit organization called Freeview. Sales are necessarily going to be only a few million per year.You can get standard or high definition Freeview, satellite dishes, or DVRs which are Freeview compatible.

Quote: Wizard

Can someone from the UK sneak in a TV from France and watch TV for free?

I suppose if you live on the southern coast and can get a broadcast signal. But as the Channel is 21 miles wide it already sucks up a good portion of the line of sight distance. But presumably such a person would also have to buy a Freeview television to watch British shows.

I should note that many Brits are perfectly fine with the license fee. It is a reasonable amount of money to pay to have commercial free televisions, and Freeview has at least 60 channels. There are more and more High Definition channels (up to 12). Some 45% of households have nothing else.

Reception is very good partly because the Brits only use UHF channels which are less noisy for digital transmission. Las Vegas has 5 stations that broadcast in VHF. KVMY in particular broadcasts in the Low VHF channels (#2-#6) which are very susceptible to noise and inability to penetrate walls.


But the license fee does not cover internet viewing as long as it isn't live. So if you are a college student and don't want to pay $220 a year, you watch websites or Netflix. Just as in the USA this is the cheapest way to view TV.

I don't know what will happen to the system once HBO, Showtime, and many other options will be available in the UK. They may have to make up for lost revenue by selling the BBC online overseas.