• The new National Technical Plan ensures the continuity of the entire current range of state-wide, regional and local digital terrestrial television channels, and opens up the availability of a new channel.

Madrid, March 25th, 2025.- The Council of Ministers today approved a royal decree with the new National Technical Plan for Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) and measures to promote its technological evolution. The standard establishes the legal and technical framework to introduce in the DTT service of any territorial area (state, autonomous and local) the DVB-T2 transmission technology that will allow the generalization of emissions with ultra high definition (UHD) quality.

After the incorporation of the high definition standard, which ended in February 2024, this National DTT Plan promotes a new technological evolution that will allow citizens to enjoy broadcasts with the best quality and DTT providers to compete technologically with other platforms or audiovisual services that use other transmission networks, such as satellite or Internet television.

The DVB-T2 technology, which uses most of the emissions of the Member States of the European Union, significantly increases the capacity in each digital multiple and therefore allows a more efficient use of the radio spectrum.

As far as current DTT channels are concerned, the new National Technical Plan for DTT maintains the same digital terrestrial (multiple digital) television networks and territorial disconnections that existed in the previous Technical Plan, so none of the existing DTT channels are lost.

The process set up to implement this technological development involves the redistribution in the organisation of state-level television channels among the different digital channels, which means that a part of the capacity of one of the multiple digital channels is free for a new state-level channel, the licence of which will be put out to tender in the near future, so that the supply of DTT channels will be extended.

Technological evolution in two phases

The process will be done in two phases. In the first, the objective is to promote the implementation of technology and for citizens to start receiving, on a regular basis, state-wide DTT channels with UHD quality. These UHD channels will broadcast simultaneous content that is already broadcast on other channels, so citizens will not stop receiving any channel or content. Also, in this initial phase, the adaptation of the TV receivers park will be carried out to receive DVB-T2 transmission technology and UHD quality broadcasts.

When the digital terrestrial TV receivers’ fleet is sufficiently adapted, phase 2 will begin, which will involve the global implementation of DVB-T2 technology and UHD quality in all DTT services, both state-wide, autonomous and local.

To guarantee this gradual adaptation of the fleet of receivers, the new National Plan sets specific dates from which the receiving equipment that does not receive emissions with these technical standards will not be able to be commercialized in Spain, thus avoiding that citizens can acquire equipment that is not adapted to the new technical requirements.