Slovakia: Digital Broadcasting Act

Slovakia’s switchover to digital broadcasting moved a step closer on 18 April 2007 with the passing of the Digital Broadcasting Act.

Digitisation will help improve the broadcast quality of sound and pictures and allow a greater number and variety of free TV and radio channels and other services. It will enable several TV and radio channels to be broadcast within the bandwidth currently needed for a single channel as well as freeing additional frequencies for other services such as the internet.

The legislation has not yet come into effect but has already proved controversial. It is fiercely opposed by the Slovak Telecommunications Authority - the regulatory body for the technical aspects of switchover and digital broadcasting – which is calling for the Act to be amended to comply with the EU recommendation to switch off analogue signals by the beginning of 2012.

The Act currently states only that existing TV stations can continue broadcasting an analogue signal until the end of 2011 but, in fact, they already hold licences authorising them to broadcast in analogue until 2019.. Even though the existing TV stations say they will comply with the timetable for switchover, they may have different owners in 2011 who will demand additional compensation to meet the costs of switching off the analogue signal, such as subsidies for set top boxes.

Until the analogue signal is switched off, there will be no bandwidth available for new channels. This is because the Act only allows one frequency layer to be established, and awards the first multiplex frequencies to the existing TV stations. No further multiplex frequencies will be introduced until the end of 2011, so any new TV stations can only be broadcast via cable or satellite. Even the new multiplex may be impossible to implement on time because it should be introduced on the frequencies released by the existing analogue broadcasters and the Telecommunications Authority does not know when these frequencies will actually be released.

From 2012, a new multiplex is to be created using the frequencies released by the current analogue broadcasts, and its channels will be allocated to public media. Concerns have also been expressed whether the ongoing financial troubles at Slovak National TV will prevent it from using the full capacity of the new multiplex.