Be aware that Susanspain is purely talking about the Costa del Sol and those who receive channels via a Sky receiver. There is no chance of freesat channels being taken off the satellite, Sky contracts or not. Sky does not own the satellite nor does it even operate it, it simply rents part of it the same as freesat does. Yes, the footprint may be narrower but the footprint posted by SES (who do own the satellite SES/Astra) shows no difference between the current satellite and the new one possibly coming in February. The consensus is that those who are receiving the signals from the current satellite and can get Ch5 and Ch4 HD will continue to receive the same channels after the switch over which, for most on the Costa Blanca to the Costa Calida is all of us providing your dish is large enough. Those who get the freesat channels without the Ch5 and Ch4 HD may need to up the size of the satellite dish although a 1.4m dish on the Costa Blanca appears sufficient.
You do not need a Sky box of any description to get freesat. A freesat receiver in UK can be bought for about £50 or thereabouts and will pick up the current freesat channels in Spain if your dish is large enough. We have a 1.4 m dish, a Sagecom HD freesat receiver connected with HDMI and get all the channels all the time. They do not drop out at certain times of the day or night although the HD channels can lose the picture in bad weather. If we get a really severe storm, the other channels can go as well but that happens in UK as well.
So there is no chance of the freesat channels disappearing from the new satellite. Internet TV can be recieved with a 2Mb connection but tends to buffer rather a lot. We have a 3Mb connection and get filmon with no buffering but have not tried their HD (subscription) service. Broadcast IPTV are already offering a 6Mb service and Movistar claims 10Mmb with a landline. There are companies installing fibre optic, Ono is already offering 20 to 50Mb on its fibre optic service but this is not yet available to everyone.
I shouldn't imagine Spain would have any problem coping with the demand. With about 800,000 Brits living in Spain (but less than 500,000 households) even if everyone used it then it would cope very easily. Also remember that UK, whilst ahead of Spain, has only been so just recently. Broadband speeds in UK in 2009 was 4.1Mb and in 2010 was 5Mb. It was only in the middle of 2010 that speeds of 10Mb were achieved and the super fast ones are a relatively new thing but still not available to all in UK. Remember, the "up to" claims of broadband speeds means it can be anything depending on the connection, distance from exchange, quality of cable etc. When we left UK 3 years ago my "up to" 10Mb speed was only achieving 4Mb with BT. Spain will catch up but doesn't seem to have the high demand that UK does.
So, Merry Christmas everybody, keep calm and don't panic. You'll still get Corrers and Strictly Come X Talent on Ice one way or the other.
Edited to add:
Yes, I do know that Susanspain was talking about the current free to air channels received through a Sky box but the post seems to imply that all freesat would be taken off. With so many people in UK cancelling their Sky subscriptions due to cost, they would be scoring a massive own goal if they took off the current channels. Just pointing out that Sky is not the be all and end all of UK TV in Spain which you shouldn't even be taking out a subscription for anyway as it is against their T&Cs.
This message was last edited by mariedav on 25/12/2013.