Kyiv Media Week started with Digital broadcasting in Ukraine Forum. The country’s main 'digitalizer' was not present.

Today, on September 13, in Kyiv’s Radisson hotel in course of Kyiv Media Week Digital broadcasting in Ukraine forum was held. The results of the August tender held by the National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council of Ukraine for DTT licenses to be given to TV channels for their signal transmission in the terrestrial digital TV network that is being built now by Zeonbud company were the main topic of discussion at the Forum. Zeonbud’s prices are the number one concern of TV channels – both, those who received the licenses, and those who did not. The prices, according to the industry professionals, are unreasonable and several times higher than the services’ prime cost.

Zeonbud company, which in December 2010 has received the license of the digital multiplexes operator, steadily ignores the broadcasters and doesn’t want to enter into the dialogue with the industry. Zeonbud, who’s been the main character of all the stories about the “digitalization” in Ukraine in the last 9 months, didn’t find it necessary to send its representatives to the Forum “Digital Broadcasting in Ukraine”. This is what the participants of the Forum had to say about it:

Andrey Shevchenko, people’s deputy of Ukraine: “We didn’t monitor how the decision on Zeonbud was taken. But so far there are no reasons to think that after 2015 what we see in our TVs will become more diverse, interesting, and of higher quality. It will not be that digital TV as we imagined it to be several years ago.”

Katerina Myasnikova, executive director of the Independent Association of Television and Radio Broadcasters: “Zeonbud is now busy with the building of the network, and it looks like they don’t even have time to talk with us about digital TV”.

Dmitry Makoveenko, specialist from the Ukrainian State University of Radio and Television: “What Zeonbud is building now doesn’t correspondent to what it should have been building. Under the license conditions its network must cover not less than 95 % of population. While according to our data, taking into account the technical specifications of Zeonbud network, it will cover maximum 70 % only, not 95 %. At the same time, the chances are high that rural households that are now watching only 3 analog TV channels will not have television at all after the switch to DTT takes place.”

Olga Bolshakova, Legislative initiatives manager of Independent Association of Broadcasters: “Zeonbud doesn’t communicate with us, just like with the majority of the market players. However, according to our data, the real prime cost of their services is at least 5 times lower than the prices that they’ve set for the TV channels for their signal transmission.”

Valentyn Koval, General producer of Teleodyn JSC: “We signed the agreement with Zeonbud without ever seeing each other. Anytime now we are waiting to receive the first invoice from them.”