The Dominican Republic has adopted the ATSC Digital Television Standard for DTV broadcasting according to an announcement by Dr. José Rafael Vargas, President of the Dominican Institute of Telecommunications (INDOTEL).
“We look forward to working with our colleagues in the Dominican Republic as they implement digital television for the benefit of their citizens,” said Mark Richer, ATSC President. “The ATSC suite of standards provides the government and broadcasters extraordinary flexibility and the ability to evolve with future marketplace requirements, while offering consumers a range of services and affordable receiver options.”
The standard was adopted by decree issued by Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez last week after the Board of Directors of INDOTEL, the regulatory body for telecommunications in the Dominican Republic, unanimously approved a report submitted by its technical staff recommending adoption of the ATSC Digital Television Standard. President Fernandez also announced that analog broadcast television switch-off will take place in September 2015.
Although the ATSC DTV standard has been adopted and deployed by hundreds of broadcasters in Canada, El Salvador, Mexico, the United States, South Korea and Honduras, efforts to expand adoption to other Latin American countries has met with mixed success. Other Latin American countries have adopted Japan’s ISDB-Tb standard, including Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador; and Costa Rica earlier this year elected to go with ISDB-T after adopting the ATSC standard several years ago. Colombia, Panama and Uruguay have adopted the DVB-T standard. The region's largest country, Brazil, has its own homegrown HDTV standard, known as SBTVD-T, derived from ISDB-T.
