The National Public Broadcasting Enterprise will get one channel for broadcasting digital programs, and the remaining two channels will be publicly bid.

The TV digitalization is a process that Macedonia is obliged to complete by the end of the year 2012, but our country has not officially launched it yet. The preparation of a frequency plan, adoption of laws, by-laws and a strategy for defining the course of action are among the prerequisites for initiating the digitalization. Although the by-laws have not been prepared yet, the Agency for Electronic Communications announced an advertisement in order to check whether there are companies interested in broadcasting digital television. However, the announcement is currently not necessary, since the legal procedures have not been completed. The people familiar with this issue claim that this was done under the pressure of the Government, in order to see which companies would apply, since this is a rather lucrative business.

Zoran Stefanovski, member of the Broadcasting Council, explains that Macedonia has an approval for 9 multiplex channels for broadcasting the digital TV programs. The country will only use three, one of which goes to the National Public Broadcasting Enterprise, and a competition will be announced for the two other channels, according to Stefanovski.

“Eight to ten TV programs can be broadcasted on a single channel radiofrequency. The National Public Broadcasting Enterprise (Macedonian Radio Television) can digitally broadcast the two TV programs – MTV 1 and MTV2 on one channel, and it can also broadcast the commercial TV stations simultaneously, if an agreement is reached”, he adds. Bids will be invited for the remaining two multiplex channels. It is possible that one company (digital television operator) could get both channels. The operator can then offer its services, i.e. digitally broadcast the five national commercial televisions.
If, on the other hand, the private TV stations decide to be digitally broadcasted over the multiplex channel of the PE “Macedonian Broadcasting” then the private cable TV operators are left with the option to offer and re-broadcast other foreign TV programs on the radiofrequency channels they would lease, and the citizens will have to pay a monthly fee. In this way, the operator that will get a digital television license becomes a direct competitor of the cable TV operators, since it can offer film, sports and science TV channels with regulated copyrights.

Every family should have a TV set that receives the digital signal or purchase an additional decoder for decompressing the signal if they want to watch the programs on the existing analog TV sets. One decoder costs about EUR 30. The “On net” provider recently revealed that it has prepared a digitalization project, which has already been approved by the Ministry of transport and communications. The company is prepared to invest EUR 30 million and purchase about 500.000 decoders and offer them free of charge to the citizens. However, the citizens will have to pay a monthly subscription for watching the programs.

With this project, On net is practically showing interest and is seriously getting prepared to be the digital television operator that could get both multiplex channels.
The people familiar with the situation comment that the advertisement of the Agency for electronic communications is announced in order to see whether there are other companies aside from “On net” which would be interested in becoming a digital television operator. The TV digitalization is an expensive project, since 8 million euros are necessary only for the needs of the PE “Macedonian Broadcasting”. We are yet to see where the funds will be obtained from, i.e. whether and with how much money will the state participate in the transfer from analog to digital television.

The people from the Broadcasting Council emphasize that when the international advertisement for selecting a company for broadcasting digital television is announced, the operator will have to make a commitment to provide free digital broadcasting of the national televisions for the citizens, not to charge for the decoders provided to the households, but only for the additional foreign TV programs which would result into a large inflow of funds. Apart from a higher quality picture, the digitalization enables transfer of data, interaction, advanced teletext, electronic program guide, studying and shopping via television etc.

Verche Georgievska
Source: Utrinski vesnik