Russia’s Dagestan to Launch Digital TV in Autumn

Test digital broadcasts will be launched in the Dagestani capital Makhachkala in autumn 2007, the Russian news agency Regnum quoted an official in this North Caucasus republic as saying on 12 July.

The republic’s broadcasting network has been upgraded to that end, Gadzhimurad Saidov, director of Dagestan’s Republican Radio and Television Broadcasting Centre, told a news conference in Makhachkala that discussed the republic’s transition to digital broadcasting.

Digitalization should start in Russia’s south because the region has the fewest number of TV channels, the agency quoted Sergey Trubitsyn, first deputy director of the Russian Radio and Television Broadcasting Network, and Vladimir Kozlov, deputy director of the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications, as saying. Kozlov said there might no longer be analogue TV in Russia by 2015.

RGVK Dagestan TV showed Saidov saying at the news conference: “In 2006, about 40 of Rossia TV channel’s TV transmitters with a capacity of 100 W were replaced. Also, in 2007 we replaced five to six radio broadcasting transmitters for FM broadcasting with a capacity of 4 kW. In 2006 and in 2005, about 150 professional digital satellite receivers were installed.”

Also discussed at the news conference were free channels to be broadcast digitally. “Eighteen channels plus a regional one will be available to everyone,” Trubitsyn said.

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony for a complex of buildings of the Radio and TV Broadcasting Centre of Dagestan in Makhachkala on 12 July, Sergey Trubitsyn said: “The transition to digital technologies is not far away but the question will always torment us – when moving to new technologies, what are you based on? Seeing this beautiful building that we are opening today, I can even say that we have done the first [thing], we have put the first coma for digital TV to appear in Dagestan.”

RGVK TV quoted Dagestan’s First Deputy Prime Minister Nizami Kaziyev as saying at a meeting with Sergey Trubitsyn prior to the inauguration ceremony: “The republic is facing a global task of drawing up a programme of developing TV and radio broadcasting in Dagestan which will be difficult to implement without close cooperation with all interested federal agencies.”

Kaziyev said: “For us this is a very topical problem because we, in essence, do not have a full coverage neither by the TV nor the radio signal… But I suppose that, taking account of the development level of our electronic devices that we currently have, we can find a way out of the situation.”

Sources:

RGVK TV, Makhachkala, in Russian 1530 gmt 12 Jul 07

Regnum, Moscow, in Russian 12 Jul 07

(c) 2007 BBC Monitoring Central Asia. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.