Bulgarian DTT woes continue

Bulgarian taxpayers are likely to foot a bill of anything between €20,000 and €200,000 a day for the country’s controversial DTT licence awards.

That, at least, is the view of Boyko Bochev and Dimcho Neshev, two executives from the company DVBT, quoted by Trud.

DVBT filed a complaint about the awards with the European Commission last week, adding to an investigation the latter is already undertaking.

DVBT argues that the winners of the DTT licences – Latvia’s Hannu Pro and the Slovak transmission company Towercom – are strongly connected, sharing equipment and even having offices next door to each other.

This raises serious doubts about competition and will impact negatively on the potential savings in distribution costs offered by switching from analogue to digital broadcasting.

DVBT failed in its bid to secure a licence for the public service multiplex, which was eventually awarded to Hannu Pro.

It now believes the awards for a total of six multiplexes made in 2009 will be cancelled, with the EC likely to monitor a future contest.

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