In the event of the Commission deciding that the measures taken by the Spanish authorities with regard the deployment of digital terrestrial television in Area II constitute state aid, and that they are not compatible with the internal market in application of article 106 TFEU, Spain claims that they would certainly be compatible with the internal market insofar as their purpose is to ensure that an objective which is of community interest is achieved (the conversion to digital broadcasting), so they would benefit from the exemption provided for in Article 107(3)(c) TFEU.

This is because (i) switchover can be done by RAI (given that it is the public service company) only if the penetration rate of DTT equals that of analogue TV; and (ii) RAI was obliged to choose its investments in the DTT sector in line with its legal obligations, and not following market criteria, since it was obliged to have two multiplexes covering at least 70 % of the population by 1 January 2005, with the aim of rapid digitalisation, helped in this by the decoder subsidies.

[11] Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting, an ETSI standard based on T-DAB, including also DAB-IP (IP TV over DAB protocol).

DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld): broadcasting system for digital video derived from the digital terrestrial television standard, optimised for mobile terminals.

Second, Mediaset maintains that terrestrial broadcasters and satellite broadcasters are not comparable companies, because the DTT operators are only required to achieve digitalisation and encourage the digital switchover in gradual stages (with simulcast and switch-off) and therefore terrestrial broadcasters are subject to specific public service obligations — with a view to ensuring the availability of terrestrial broadcasting throughout Italy — and to use open technologies.

Digital video broadcasting can be over a terrestrial network (DVB-T) or by satellite (DVB-S) or cable (DVB-C).