Technical component of Armenia’s transition to digital TV and radio broadcasting afoot as scheduled

YEREVAN, October 17. /ARKA/. The technical component of Armenia’s transition to digital television and radio broadcasting is running as scheduled, the Committee to Protect Freedom of Expression says in its report on the country’s transition to digital television and radio broadcasting.

“Of the three components – legislative, technical and social, technical one is being implemented most successfully,” the committee says in the report. “The implementation of technical component speeded up after the government set up a new schedule of introduction of the system.”

The construction of a new generation network is being carried out by Sweden’s Ericsson and Television and Radio Broadcasting Network of Armenia CJSC as scheduled.

But unlike effectively solvable technical issues, the problem of digital broadcasting availability for almost 5% of the country’s population that live in remote villages in mountainous terrain, where microwave transmission can’t reach, remains unsolved.  

“Monitoring has revealed that these areas’ residents will be left without their regional TV channels and will receive only a set of TV programs of the national multiplex transmitted via satellite,” the report says.
The committee’s experts say that social component of the transition to digital broadcasting is ill though-out. The country’s population has not been informed about this transition and the expected results and no public opinion polls have been conducted to see citizens’ willingness to pay for additional services, though this had been implied by the government’s ‘Concept of Television and Radio Broadcasting Transition to Digital System’.  

Provision of free decoders to low-income families is mentioned in the report among problems in the transition process.

The authors of the report say that according to the concept, there are 150,000 families that need free decoders, while in the government’s program funds are envisaged only for 100,000 families.  
This very component will determine whether the transition will be completed in due time or not.
The Committee to Protect Freedom of Expression started monitoring the transition from analogous television and radio broadcasting to digital in 2010. The latest monitoring was conducted over a period between April and August 2014 under the OSCE Yerevan Office’s support.

In February 2014, the Armenian government demanded the transition process to be completed on June 1, 2015.  ---0----

Read the news first and discuss them in our Telegram

19:43 10/17/2014