CARLA ARIGHI, who runs the fish-and-chip shop in the Cumbrian town of Whitehaven, is a fan. So too are Simon McDowell and Lynn Anderson from Haigh’s, the local butcher. Even the town cryer, Rob Romano, is an advocate.

The four feature in an ad campaign for Freeview running in the press in Whitehaven, which is at the forefront of Britain’s digital-television revolution.

The town will be the first in the UK to have the analogue television signal switched off. From next month only viewers with access to digital technology will be able to watch television. The Border TV region will be next, followed by the Granada and Central areas. The whole country will be digital-only by 2012.

The point of the campaign is to promote Freeview, the free-to-air digital terrestrial television service that was launched five years ago, and remind residents that they do not have to take out a subscription to Sky or get cable to access digital television.

Freeview has been an unqualified success and the digital switchover should be a real boon to its fortunes. But two big issues threaten to distort the picture.

First, the service is unable to offer broadcasts in high definition (HD), which is becoming an increasingly popular format.

Second, BSkyB, in which News Corp, ultimate owner of The Sunday Times, has a 39% stake, is attempting to withdraw the three channels it makes available on Freeview and replace them with pay-TV channels. BSkyB’s request is being considered by Ofcom, the regulator.

Begun in October 2002 by the BBC, BSkyB and Crown Castle Communications (now National Grid Wireless), Freeview aimed to do what it said on the tin. Viewers only had to buy a set-top box, plug it into their television sets, and a whole raft of extra digital channels could be accessed. It worked a treat. By the second quarter of 2007, Freeview was on the main set in 9.1m homes, according to data published this month by Ofcom.

“Freeview has completely changed the landscape of British television,” said Theresa Wise, a partner at Accenture, the management consultancy.

Even those who were there at its conception have been taken by surprise. Ilse Howling, Freeview’s general manager and its most senior executive, said: “Frankly, the growth has been phenomenal. It flew in the face of all the received wisdom about what digital television was.”

With digital becoming the norm, the next phase is the rise of HD. But here Freeview is at a clear disadvantage. It does not broadcast any HD channels and will not be able to do so until after digital switchover in 2012 because it does not have the Looking to the future: a scene from the Ugly Betty sitcom on the E4 Freeview channel, above, and, right, people queueing during the Workington VCR amnesty bandwidth. Even after the analogue signal is turned off, and bandwidth freed up, the government has indicated it should be auctioned to the highest bidder.

There is some furious lobbying going on by the main terrestrial broadcasters to change government policy.

Howling promises that there will eventually be an HD service on the platform. “Estimates suggest that there will be 37m HD televisions in the UK by the time of switchover and the vast majority of those will have Freeview on them. It seems strange if a strong HD offer is not available to those homes,” she said.

Despite this, Howling refused to comment on how the spectrum should be allocated. Some think the main terrestrial broadcasters have no automatic right to the extra capacity. “Do they [public-service broadcasters] get it by divine right, and will there be strings attached?” asked Toby Syfret of Enders Analysis, a media consultancy.

Arguably of more pressing concern is Sky’s move to replace its three free-to-air channels with subscription services. The proposal is causing consternation, because asking Freeview customers to pay a subscription subverts the raison d’être behind the digital terrestrial platform.

At the time Sky’s decision was announced, some commentators said its position as a Freeview shareholder was “untenable”. Howling takes a more diplomatic line. “Sky has been part of Freeview since its inception,” she said. “It has always been a useful contributor and I would not imagine that changing.”

There is precedent for pay-TV operators running channels that are available on Freeview. Top Up TV provides access to a range of extra stations and Setanta Sports has made its Premier League football coverage available. Anyone interested in either of these has to buy a special Freeview box with the relevant smart-card technology.

Sky has said that the advertising-revenue model does not make financial sense for its Freeview commitments, though rivals suspect that the change is more about taking on Setanta.

Whatever the reason, some observers’ concern is that allowing pay-TV channels on Freeview dilutes its proposition and makes it less attractive to new customers.

Howling insists that it is impossible to “prejudge” what Sky will do. “We don’t know the detail of what the Sky offering would be. [Free-to-air channels] have always been at the heart of what Freeview does and one would have to understand what Sky’s offer was to say how consumers would respond to it,” she said.

In the meantime, Howling is pinning her hopes on the recently launched Freeview Play-back device to boost viewer numbers. It seems to be working. The system – Freeview’s answer to Sky+ and Virgin’s V+ – accounts for just over a quarter of all digital terrestrial set-top box sales.

At Workington, just north of Whitehaven, Freeview recently held a video-recorder amnesty, so customers could trade in their old VCRs for a Freeview Play-back system, at a discount.

Whitehaven may be at the forefront of Britain’s technological advancement, but it’s good to see that some old-fashioned techniques are being used to speed up the revolution.

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