 While the idea of a single-frequency network of multiple transmitters broadcasting the same programming on the same channel from multiple transmitter sites is not a new concept, the ATSC digital television standard in use in North America was not designed for this mode of operation and was poorly adapted to these applications.The restrictive timing requirements and poor multipath interference handling of early ATSC implementations would have precluded multiple synchronous transmitters on the same frequency at the time of the first wide-scale commercial ATSC deployment in 1998; these restrictions eased somewhat as receiver design advanced in subsequent years.By 2004, technology existed to provide digital television receivers with the means to detect static (not mobile or changing) multipath interference (subject to certain timing constraints) and compensate for its effects on the digital signal.