Pay TV in Ukraine: Major Problems and Search for their Solutions

When speaking at Pay TV Ukraine conference in the course of KYIV MEDIA WEEK 2014 Sergey Boyko, President, VOLIA company, reviewed and summed up the results shown by Ukraine’s market of telecommunications and pay TV over the last eight months. Apart from extremely unfavourable implications caused by Euromaidan and annexation of Crimea (nearly 5% TV households lost), the information war with Russia also contributed to the market aggravation, since 15 Russian TV channels are banned from broadcasting in the territory of Ukraine. Besides, content became more expensive due to the local currency devaluation and - to make the matter  worse - hostilities are in full swing in the eastern part  of the country.  

The expert is of the opinion that obsolete legislation is one of the major problems faced by the Pay TV sector. The legal act currently regulating the market was actually passed 10 years ago. Being not immune to moral aging it does not meet the market technical state of today. The regulatory in charge of the market is lacking in transparency. Speaking of the regulatory the speaker means rather the its former membership who have not shown any concrete steps towards streamlining the market operations.

“We have, in fact, no effective tools to fight piracy. And this is another challenge that affects the market”, comments Mr. Boyko. According to him inequality and discriminatory approach to different market players also account for the current acute situation. 

It is only logical that the a.m. factors adversely affect the market performance and, in particular: decrease in the number of subscribers entails a 5% drop in market monetary capacity: the 2012  and 2013 decrease in the number of subscribers accounted for 100,000  and 80,000 persons ,respectively;  speaking of this year we assess real losses in subscribers as 500,000-750,000 accounting for Crimea and eastern Ukraine which would inevitably result in reducing assignments to the budget. One can’t ignore  the content quality deterioration and decrease in the number of channels within the Pay TV user packages.

Market players shall be guaranteed equal terms and provisions. This is a major issue to be dealt with. Licensing shall be ensured for all providers of access to TV programs regardless of technological platforms, i.e. technical neutrality comes, first and foremost. All providers of access to TV programs shall be licensed regardless of technological platforms. At the same time (and this is no less important according to Boyko) all providers shall comply with and abide by all and any requirements stipulated by legislation and licenses, i.e. to distribute TV programs as decoded on the air of TV programs within the Universal Program Service  regardless of technology (whether analog or digital platform).

There is also an urgent need to address the piracy issue which is last but sure not least. We might carry out a nationwide raid to expose web sites delivering illegal content and make them cease their operations. The same is true for card sharing resources, for subjects not licensed to provide  access to programs. This work completed - a few show trials are bound to be held so as to do away with piracy resources of the kind.

It is only afterwards that Ukraine’s Pay TV might expect that that the number of legal subjects  in the market would increase together with the number of free quality free TV channels. Moreover, the number of cable and satellite TV subscribers would eventually grow when transferring to digital TV. Sergey Boyko assumes that the market monetary volume would actually be characterized by growth within a period of 2-3 years.

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