NZ ATV to be forced to go digital

Digital Amateur Television is coming to New Zealand, but not necessarily because the Kiwi ham radio community wants to make the change.

ZL Hams will soon be forced to go digital if they wish to continue Amateur Fast Scan Television operations.
This after government regulators announce that all analogue modulated TV transmissions in the VHF and UHF broadcast bands, which include Channel 39 used by ham radio, will close down in March 2015, or at some earlier date.

At that time the upper end of the New Zealand UHF television allocation will be cleared of television, so that the vacated spectrum can be used for next-generation mobile communications.

One consequence of these decisions is that the existing television transmissions will need to convert to digital so as to fit into about half of the present spectrum, requiring that their transmission parameters need to be more closely defined than at present. For the Amateur Television service this means that each Radio License for analogue-modulated TV needs to be replaced by a Spectrum License for analogue-modulated TV.

As part of the process, our government telecommunications regulator has cancelled all of the existing Radio Licenses for Channel 39 TV Repeaters. Operators of Channel 39 TV Repeaters need to close them down to avoid receiving an
Infringement Notices from the regulatory agency.

Those wishing to operate their analogue-modulated Channel 39 ATV repeaters between now and the 2015 Digital TV Switch-Over, will be required to apply for a Spectrum License. However this Spectrum License for analogue ATV
transmitters will only exist until the Analogue shut down date. Ham Radio access to New Zealand Channel 39 which runs from 614 to 622 MHz was made by footnote to the nations telecommunications regulations many years ago when a chunk of the 432 MHz band was taken from the amateur radio service.

At this time, its not known how many of the nation's Amateur Television Repeaters will apply for a new Spectrum License to at least temporarily keep their analogue systems operational and on the air.

WIA