Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Freeview just a marketing name for DVB-T (or T2 nowadays), which supported encrypted content since its inception and can mix encrypted & non-encrypted channels in the same multiplex?
Yes, and in fact Freeview started off as a primarily encrypted commercial service called ONdigital which was taken over by the BBC and turned into Freeview when it failed commercially.
This is correct but not every TV will have the slot for a decryption card. The UK has good broadband but far from the level of a universal public service. (That would be communism apparently)
That's a chicken & egg problem though. In fact CI slots used to be more popular but declined as the system was pretty much never used (pay-TV is typically only used for high-end services which then provided their own set-top-box offering extra features such as recording or catch-up TV services over the internet). The problem can also be trivially solved by cheap set-top-boxes (during the migration to digital TV, DVB-T tuner set-top-boxes were already inexpensive and technology has advanced even more since then) for the immediate future to avoid forcing people to upgrade their entire TV sets.
Key distribution is already a solved problem as well, the UK has a large userbase of smartcard-based prepayment systems such as for electric/gas meters or transport cards (Oyster card) and every tobacco/liquor store has a terminal that can sell or reload these cards. Expanding this system to reload TV cards is just a software update.
London has good broadband in parts. In the central postcode of a major city in 2019, I could only get 40Mbit broadband, pathetically low compared to the multiple 1-2Gbit options I have in the US for the same price or lower.
