DSO strategy submitted to Government
A Digital Switchover (DSO) Strategy for Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) was submitted to the Council of Ministers for adoption on the 17th March 2009.
The original draft strategy was initially submitted to the Council of the DTT Forum of BiH on the 31st December with a proposal to open a public consultation.
The public consultation was launched jointly, on the 14th January, by the Ministry of Communication and Transport, The Communications Regulatory Agency and the DTT Forum, with an end date for contributions of the 14th February 2009.
The resulting final draft strategy submitted to government proposes an analogue switch over date for the UHF band of the 1st December 2011 and the use of DVB-T with MPEG-4 (H.264/AVC) compression for DTT broadcasting in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The strategy goes on to advise that the DSO transition period should be as short as possible, assisted by a public information campaign to adequately inform and educate the public on what needs to be done during and before the switch over.
Subsidies should be used as a way of stimulating fast STB penetration, enable monitoring and allow broadcasters to speed up the DSO process.
The DTT Forum has set up a very informative website to provide information on the transition to DTT in Bosnia and Herzegovina and made it available in several languages.
DTT Form website http://www.dtt.ba/eng/index.html
Source: General Secretary of the DTT Forum
Item added: 8th May 2009


Background Information

Bureaucratic problems in the Communication Regulatory Agency (CRA) are highlighted by Sartelcom as the main reason why the introduction of an interactive pay service using DVB-T is currently stalled in Bosnia Herzegovina.
Rudof Bosnjak, owner of Sartelcom says that no regulatory framework currently exists, making progress difficult.

So far Sartelcom, a recent start-up company, have been refused a pilot licence for the project but hope that this situation will soon be reversed.

Sartelcom have also produced some interesting statistics about the TV situation in Bosnia Herzegovina which are detailed on their website  http://www.sartelcom.ba
There are estimated to be 500,000 TV households amongst the 3,500,000 population an to service these households it is suggested that on each of the existing 100 transmitter sites, 5 DVB-T transmitters could be utilised giving over 20 channels.

Source : Sartelcom

Last page update: 8th May 2009, Barry Tew

The information on these pages comes from many sources and whilst DVB believe it to be correct we cannot guarantee its accuracy.