Russia’s digital TV plans take shape

chris

A major report just out takes a close look at Russia’s broadcasting state of play, and measures the remarkable growth of TV locally – and forecasts an extremely buoyant future for the sector.
The 155-page study* written by the European Audiovisual Observatory – EAVO - and Moscow-based consultants Groteck Co Ltd, says the size of the overall Russian IT, telecoms and broadcasting sector is valued at €42.1bn (US$66.5bn) last year, up an impressive 25.4% on 2006, and likely to further grow to be worth €50bn this year.

Moreover, the TV sector itself is capable of much greater growth given that the cost of accessing terrestrial TV is miniscule for citizens when compared to their “Western” counterparts, and is stated to cost just 0.08% of general household costs.

EAVO states that the introduction of DTT in Russia is a government priority during the 2008-2015 timeframe, and represents investments of €10bn. In the satellite TV segment, 100% of signals are broadcast in digital format (by the end of 2007 the number of subscribers of the three satellite TV operators had reached 2.5 million). Regarding cable TV networks (as of April 1, 2007) a minimum of one million subscribers watched digital channels (7.4% of the total number of cable TV subscribers). The Moscow subscribers of STREAM TV, who receive TV channels over ADSL with the use of IPTV technology, are included in this number. Digital cable television and broadband constitute the delivery system of highest priority for private companies. The development of digital TV in Russia in 2008 will be financed on the basis of the largest private investors. The broadband subscriber access networks based upon DOCSIS, ADSL (ADSL2+) and Ethernet (MetroEthernet) technologies will be the main distribution channels for digital TV channels.

Assessments of the market penetration of digital TV in Russia differ. The Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications believes that digital TV does not exist in a practical sense in today’s Russia, aside from in several pilot zones where trials have been conducted on the introduction of the terrestrial television using the DVB-T standard. According to some experts, from the end of 2007, the number of digital TV subscribers within the cable networks (as of December 31, 2007) had doubled, and reached two million due to the aggressive policy pursued by such market players as The Central Telegraph, AKADO and Corbina Telecom, in connecting subscribers to digital TV, says the report.

“Over 200,000 mobile TV subscribers (the largest operator is MegaFon) and those receiving TV using MMDS technology (the largest operator is Cosmos TV) also receive TV channels in the digital format. There are about 100,000 digital TV subscribers in the pilot zones where the introduction of the terrestrial digital TV (DVB-T standard) was tested.
It can then be estimated that almost 10% of households had access to the services of digital TV in Russia as of the end of the year – i.e. 4.7m homes out of 49m Russian households.”


Source: Rapid TV News

__________________