Gearing up. Chris Dziadul looks at digital rollout across CEE

No one can doubt the huge advances that have been made by Central and Eastern Europe’s TV industry in recent years, though especially since eight countries in the region joined the EU in May 2004. However, they have been far from uniform, and there is clearly much work that still needs to be done.
This is particularly true in the cable sector, where many operators have been slow to introduce digital TV services despite growing competition from both incumbent and alternative telcos. The news that UPC now plans to do so in Poland and Hungary in 2008 should therefore be welcomed, and given that the Liberty Global-owned company will also offer HDTV, VOD and PVR we can probably expect to see other operators speed up their own deployments.
The roll out of DTT across the region has also left much to be desired. Although some countries embarked on trials as far back as the late 1990s, to date only Estonia and Lithuania have launched (relatively) full platforms.
In the former case, the service is known as ZuumTV and a joint venture between STV, the country’s leading cable operator, and the transmission company Levira. The latter is meanwhile operated by the incumbent telco Teo LT and complements its recently launched IPTV platform Gala TV. In both instances, the services have opted for MPEG-4 compression technology, thereby allowing for the introduction of HD services at a future date.
The Czech Republic has also introduced DTT services, though they are still limited in terms of both channel line-up and coverage. Hungary meanwhile operates a trial service in Budapest and Kabhegy, while in Poland TVP offers limited DTT services in parts of the south and south east of the country.
The picture looks much brighter in the case of DTH, with most large countries in the region now served by at least one platform. IPTV services, too, are being launched uniformly throughout Central and Eastern Europe.
That uniformity should also become more apparent in the cable industry from next year, when UPC finally enters the digital fray.