Vodafone Deutschland to begin standardising TV frequencies

Vodafone Deutschland is standardising the frequencies used by its TV and radio channels across its footprint to improve the uniformity and efficiency of its offering.

Lars Riedel

Up to 350 TV and radio channels will receive a new frequency. The conversion process for Vodafone’s 13 million TV customers will be phased on a step-by-step basis.

The process will kick off on August 29 in Nuremberg, with subscribers informed that they may need to retune their set-tops to continue to receive a full range of channels.

Set-tops from Vodafone, Unitymedia and Sky and some integrated TV sets will find the new frequencies automatically.

Following the switch in Nuremberg, the change will be rolled out to other regions and is expected to be complete by the middle of next year.

The move follows a process of creating a uniform pay TV offering and a switchover process in North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Baden-Württemburg, the three regions where Vodafone acquired networks from Liberty Global’s Unitymedia division.

“Since we always change over at night and most TV devices automatically carry out a channel search, many of our customers will not even notice the changeover. The uniform frequency spectrum gives us greater technical freedom and increases the performance of the network. As a result, our customers can continue to benefit from our wide range of entertainment offerings for GigaTV and higher data rates in the future,” said Lars Riedel, head of TV and entertainment at Vodafone.