Freeview approaching 2.5m homes

Freeview is expected to be in some 2.5 million homes around the country by Christmas.

Set-top boxes required to watch the service - which celebrated its first birthday just yesterday - have doubled in the last month to 50,000 sales per week. With Christmas just six weeks away and, if sales levels are maintained, the total number of homes with a DTT box could reach 2.5 million by the end of the year.

Freeview general manager Matthew Seaman told the Media Guardian that the customer services hotline had received 200,000 calls in the past ten days, double the amount of enquiries from one year ago.

"Freeview has already outstripped our own expectations by a fair degree and we're very confident it's going to be a big Christmas," he said.

The news comes just days after the BBC launched a new campaign promoting the saervice.