For the newspapers, Pace's announcement last week of a new line in television set-top boxes merited a business news brief. Strange then that Radio 4's agenda-setting Today programme put it high in the play-list, alongside erupting African volcanoes and alleged terrorist networks in Middle England.

From a Creative Business perspective, the BBC was right. Pace's announcement that it is ready to supply a £99.99 digital television receiver, the size of a small book, is a big moment in the plan to get digital television into British homes.

It confirms that the coalition of broadcasters assembled to create a free-to-air, multi-channel digital service, first revealed in this column last November, is well on its way to delivering.

The arrival of the box, which can be upgraded to receive ITV Digital's subscription service, indicates the level of confidence manufacturers now feel in the work of this digital coalition. Pace's competitors are certain to join the fray.

Their confidence is in order. After weeks of negotiations, the broadcasters in the coalition - the BBC, Granada, Carlton, Channel 4, Channel 5 and, probably, Sky - are very close to resolving the big issue which had divided them - namely how to divide the spectrum available for the new service between free and paid-for services.

The latest proposal envisages a 50:50 split in the use of spectrum between free and pay-TV. Given the possibility of signal compression, this could allow as many as 40 channels. This turns ITV Digital into something altogether less ambitious than its satellite rival, Sky, but a something which has a real prospect of making money.

Crucially, the emergence of a box priced below £100 means that the tricky issue of box subsidies may be avoided. Market research suggests that at this figure, consumers will be prepared to buy in order to receive the BBC's new digital channels, along with others from ITV, Channel 4 and elsewhere.

This offer will shortly be enhanced by the inclusion of BBC 3, the service aimed at young adults rebuffed by the government last autumn.

A revised and much better argued BBC 3 plan is now sitting in Tessa Jowell's in-tray. If she turns it down a second time, I'm Greg Dyke.

The fact that the Pace box is due in the shops this Easter also puts pressure on the members of the digital coalition to resolve speedily their remaining differences, such as the nature of the legal entity of the joint venture and the management of its brand identity and marketing.

It would be a disaster all too familiar from the mishandled introduction of digital television sets to put a new range of set-top boxes into Currys and Dixons without strong marketing support and a clear understanding by retailers and customers of what they are for.

Assuming these difficulties can be overcome, it is becoming increasingly feasible to imagine that the government might, after all, be able to switch off analogue television signals by 2010 and so redeploy a swathe of valuable radio spectrum.

A consultation exercise on the longer-range allocation of spectrum (announced on December 20 - you can be forgiven if you missed it*) is now under way and due to be completed by March.

This week, there will be another step forward when the on-again, off-again idea of appointing a senior television industry figure to help drive the digital strategy forward should also be resolved. Barry Cox, deputy chairman of Channel 4, and a former LWT man, is favoured to take on this role, though not, thank goodness, the once-mooted title of digital czar.

All of this fits together neatly, except in one respect: the role of Sky. Because just as everyone else has been labouring to create a digital coalition to promote free-to-air, multi-channel digital TV, Sky has chosen to drop its own bottom-of-the-range service. This offered a limited range of digital channels via satellite and a subsidised set-top box.

Sky's explanation for this puzzling move is that a change in regulatory requirement from the European Commission has allowed it to scrap a service it never marketed, on which it loses money and which accounts for only 60,000 of its 6m customers.

Sky says that by forcing anyone who wants to hook up to satellite without subscribing to pay channels to fork out the full cost of installation, which runs between £300 and £500, it will clarify its profile as a pay-TV company.

However, this is not entirely consistent with either its willingness to contribute a free-to-air channel to the new digital terrestrial platform, or arguably with its dominant shareholder's ambitions to buy into Channel 5 or ITV if the forthcoming Communications Bill permits it.

More likely, Sky is keeping its options open and its wallet closed. With current technology, satellite is the only way to reach the most geographically isolated parts of Britain, but Sky is determined not to find itself subsidising these installations.

At the same time, it will continue to insist that the BBC lives up to its claim to be "platform neutral" with regard to terrestrial, cable and satellite distribution. Given the depths of the BBC's purse and its power as a marketer, Sky fears that a BBC-led terrestrial coalition could drive customers away from satellite.

This is all clearly part of a very much wider game, as every player involved seeks the most advantageous distribution base for its programmes at a moment of impending regulatory change.

For Sky, the game is doubly complicated now that it knows it must also find a way round the consequences of the Office of Fair Trading's verdict, just before Christmas, that Sky has abused its power in its dealings with other broadcasters.

But to Pace, at least, a brief moment in the sun of history.

*Available at www.digitaltelevision.gov.uk/pdfs/digtv_spectrum_planning.pdf

Ian Hargreaves is director of the Centre for Journalism Studies at Cardiff University

hargreavesian@hotmail.com