It's not about the boxes being supplied to the elderly rather it's all about the quality of the Freeview signal being impacted by the presence of the 4G signal, which will overun on the same frequency as Freeview. This means that some people who previously received Freeview without difficuly MAY find that when the 4G system is made active that the quality of signal that they would normally recieve will be so degraded as to make Freeview reception impossible.
Hence, (according to the report) there will be a 'company' setup by the government who can be called upon to supply 'filters' to attempt to aid the reception of Freeview, else provide guidance towards an alternative solution (ie Freesat), to people who are experiencing trouble and can no longer get Freeview.
For boats out in the wild, and 'in the cut' - my concern would be that a degraded signal caused by the presence of a 4G signal around the country MAY make finding a Freeview signal of good quality to lock onto, difficult or impossible. The government are obviously aware of the impending problem and my post was just to make all us boaters aware also.