15. 03. 2013

SERBIA AMONG 13 STILL ANALOG COUNTRIES

Belgrade, March 15, 2013 (Euractiv.rs) - Switchover from analog to digital broadcasting of TV signal by the end of 2012 has been concluded in 26 out of 39 European countries. Unfortunately, Serbia is not among them.

The date for final switchover was first planned for April 2012, when instead, a test broadcasting of digital signal began. Recommended date by EU was end of 2012. This was not respected even by some EU member states, however, some non-EU states such as Croatia, Switzerland, Norway and Island, have managed to conclude their digitalization.

According to data of the European Audio-Visual Observatory portal that monitors 39 countries, in the last year, Ireland, Great Britain, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal and Slovakia completed the process, which counts up to 22 countries that have switched over to digital broadcasting in EU.

Greece, Poland and Bulgaria will complete the transition in this year, while Hungary should do it by the end of this or sometimes next year. Romania will finish the digitalization by 2015.

Outside EU, Macedonia should switch from analog to digital signal in 2013, while Bosnia and Herzegovina will complete this process in the next year.

Montenegro, Albania, Russia and Turky are planning to start using only digital signal in 2015.

According to the Ministry of Foreign and Internal Trade and Telecommunications, digitalization in Serbia is in "its critical phase", as a consequence of serious problems and still burning issues dating from previous times.

As State Secretary for Telecommunications Stefan Lazarevic said, one of the problems was vaguely defined characteristics of the distribution network for digital broadcasting, as well as the absence of certain laws and by-laws. He said that Serbia was in much more grave position than other countries when it came to trasmitters' locations, as they had been distructed and damaged during the air raids.

In order to jump-start the process of digitalization, the Ministry has formed a working group, gathering representatives of RATEL and public company ETV with the aim to speed up the activities of transition to digital signal.

The Ministry is hoping the process will be concluded by June 2015. In the next few months, the Ministry will work on preparing a detailed plan of switchover to digital broadcasting.