Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia progress DSO
June 24, 2014
From Branislav Pekic in Rome
Montenegro’s Agency for Electronic Media has issued to Radio-difuzni Centar the first national DTT multiplex operator license in the country.
The company will operate Multiplex 1, covering four alotment areas for DVB-T/DVB-T2, as defined by the Plan for the Allocation of Frequencies for Digital Terrestrial Broadcasting. The four alotments are for channel 43 (Bjelasica); channel 35 (Lovcen); channel 24 (Podgorica) and channel 49 (Tvrdas).
Multiplex 1 will initially carry two TV channels and two radio stations of public broadcaster Radio Televizija Crne Gore (RTCG), which Radio-difuzni centar will have to carry free of charge. Other Montenegrin TV channels will be added after a public tender to be announced in the second half of 2014.
Meanwhile, in neighbouring Serbia, DTT network operator Emisiona Tehnika i Veze plans to cover 90 per cent of the population over the next two months. Currently, Serbian TV viewers can recieve a total of 11 TV channels on DTT (RTS 1, RTS 2, RTS HD, Pink, B-92, Happy, RTS Digital, RTV 1, RTV 2, Studio B and Belle Amie).
For its part, Bosnia and Herzegovina plans to complete the first phase of the introduction of DTT in mid-August, with the installation of transmission equipment to cover the three biggest cities – Sarajevo, Banja Luka and Mostar. More cities would be covered during the second phase, including Trebinje, Posusje, Livno, Bihac and Travnik.