affiliates. Europe, Asia, Africa and South America Most television services outside North America are national networks established by a combination of publicly funded broadcasters and commercial broadcasters. Most nations established television networks in a similar way: the first television service in each country was operated by a public broadcaster, often funded by a television licensing fee, and most of them later established a second or even third station providing a greater variety of content. Commercial television services also became available when private companies applied for television broadcasting licenses. Often, each new network would be identified with their channel number, so that individual stations would often be numbered "One", "Two", "Three" and so forth. United Kingdom The first television network in the United Kingdom was operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). On 2 November 1936 the BBC opened the world's first regular high-definition television service, from a 405 lines transmitter at Alexandra Palace. The BBC remained dominant until eventually on 22 September 1955, commercial broadcasting was established to create a second television network. Rather than creating a single network with local channels owned and operated by a single company (as is the case with the BBC), each local area had a separate television channel that was independently owned and operated, although most of these channels shared a number of programmes, particularly during peak evening viewing hours. These channels formed the ITV network. When the advent of UHF broadcasting allowed a greater number of television channels to broadcast, the BBC launched a second channel, BBC 2 (with the original service being renamed BBC 1). A second national commercial network was launched Channel 4, although Wales instead introduced a Welsh-language service, S4C. These were later followed by the launch of a third commercial network, Channel 5. Since the introduction of digital television, the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 each introduced a number of digital-only channels. Sky operates a large number of channels including Sky One, Sky Witness, Pick, Challenge and Sky Atlantic; as does UKTV, which operates channels like Dave, Drama Gold, W and Yesterday. Sweden Sweden had only one television network from 1956 until the early-1990s: the public broadcaster Sveriges Television (SVT). Commercial companies such as Modern Times Group, TV4, Viasat, and SBS Discovery have established TV networks since the 1980s although they initially aired exclusively on satellite. In 1991, TV4 became Sweden's first commercial television network to air