Abstract—The paper discuses how the imminent transitionto the digital terrestrial television in UHF (DigitalSwitchover) could be employed towards enabling always-onconnectivity and triple-play services access even from ruraland dispersed locations, i.e. in areas where notermination/connection exists between the local PSTNexchanger and the optical fibre core backbone. Exploitingthe European digital video broadcasting standard inregenerative configurations, the paper introduces anarchitecture that utilises the television stream as a commonbroadband infrastructure, capable to deliver not onlycustom digital television bouquets, but also and mostpredominant, to provide access to triple-play services.Utilising this television beam in backhaul (middle-mile)configurations it extends the core backbone to reach ruraland dispersed locations, enabling therefore the immediateand cost-effective deployment (in these areas) oftechnologies that provide for always-on connectivity, such asWLAN, xDSL, etc.

Index Terms—Broadband access, Digital switchover,IP/DVB testbed, Pilot operation, Triple-play services

Cite: G. Mastorakis, E. Pallis, C. Mantakas, G. Kormentzas, C. Skianis, "Exploiting Digital Switchover for Broadband Services Access in Rural Areas," Journal of Communications, vol. 1, no. 6, pp. 45-50, 2006.