Broadband telecommunication system and method used therein to reduce the latency of channel switching by a multimedia receiver

A broadband telecommunication system with several content servers (BS 1 - 4 ) providing channels of multimedia data to subscribers (TV 1 - 4 ) coupled thereto via a access unit, preferably an Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) Subscriber Access Multiplexer (ASAM). The content servers are also coupled to the ADSL Subscriber Access Multiplexer (ASAM) via a Zapping Service Box (ZSB) that merges the channels into a composed channel transmitted to the ASAM via a single zapping channel (ZC). When a subscriber (TV 3 ) requests a selected channel, and when this channel is not yet directly available at the ASAM, the latter immediately provides to this subscriber the composed channel until the ASAM receives the requested channel directly from the content server providing it.