Translated material
Three letter number
Relevant CIS departments discussed the transition to a new television broadcasting format
The first appearance in the CIS of the recently appointed Minister of Communications and Mass Media of Russia Igor Shchegolev as an international moderator, according to signs, could well have been unlucky: he was to hold the 13th meeting of the Coordination Council for Informatization under the Regional Commonwealth in the Field of Communications (RCC) in Ashgabat.However, yesterday everything turned out perfectly. During his two days in the capital of Turkmenistan, Mr. Shchegolev discussed with his colleagues exclusively popular topics: new generation passports , the transition to digital television and radio broadcasting, the speedy introduction of the use of the Cyrillic alphabet on the Internet , electronic money transfers, human capital in the field of infocommunication technologies.
Russia boasted to other CIS members that in September it once again became a millionaire. To date, more than 1 million 50 thousand biometric passports have been issued in the country, and by the end of the year this figure will increase to 1 million 300 thousand. This was announced by the First Deputy Director of the Federal Migration Service of Russia, Major General Mikhail Tyurkin. He assured that the introduction of new generation passports in our country went more or less smoothly; Russia actually learned from the mistakes of others.
Major General Tyurkin, as an ordinary citizen, was worried not even about the high technologies that his service was mastering in every possible way, but about our mentality. He stated: “We (FMS. - Ed. ) in terms of infrastructure will be fully ready for the transition to new generation passports already in 2010. But this does not mean the abolition of old-style passports. We don't need urgency and excitement. We don’t want to provoke the population and create discomfort.”
Meanwhile, as Mr. Tyurkin explained to a Vremya Novostey correspondent, the need to have a biometric passport may be caused by the requirements set by foreign partners. “If there are no restrictions from other states, then we will not rush anyone,” he explained. Mass “biometrization” of the country, as the heads of the Federal Migration Service promise, should not lead to a significant increase in the cost of foreign passports. Now the state fee for a new generation passport is twice as expensive as for a regular passport and amounts to 1,000 rubles. The FMS assumes that it will remain so, as well as the registration period within one month. Another thing is that if an urgent registration of a foreign passport is required, we all go to a commercial structure and pay a lot of money. Apparently, the FMS could take on the issue of urgent passports at affordable rates. In any case, such ideas are being discussed within the department. All that remains is to put them on paper.
In principle, the availability of communication and information services for users was the motto of all meetings held by Russian Minister Igor Shchegolev. For example, Russia must stop analogue television and radio broadcasting and switch to digital by 2015. It seems that there is still quite a lot of time, but, as it turned out, there are even more problems.
The representative of Belarus Sergei Dudarev identified only a few of them. First of all, standardization of equipment for all CIS countries. It is known that only Russia and Ukraine have domestic equipment, others use completely imported ones. This is where it can become difficult to develop common approaches to digital equipment standards. Although, according to the director of the department of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, Vitaly Stytsko, national standards must be correlated with European ones. And, according to him, this must be done “on the shore.” Mr. Stytsko also believes that the transition period (when there will be dual television broadcasting - both analogue and digital) should be minimal. No more than six months, at most nine months. “Parallel broadcasting is too expensive,” Mr. Shchegolev agreed.
One of the serious problems in the transition to digital remains access to the radio frequency spectrum. The Russian Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications is currently developing an economic model that will allow for the conversion of the radio frequency spectrum and, accordingly, the release of frequencies.
Representatives of Ukraine told their CIS colleagues that they were also experiencing difficulties with radio frequencies. But for a different reason. At the time of the privatization of the radio frequency spectrum, businessmen managed to buy up new and best ones, but government programs remained on the old ones and are now suffering. The Ukrainians even asked the Russian minister to “intercede” and give recommendations to the Ukrainian cabinet of ministers on this matter.
“This is not a matter of surreptitiously asserting frequencies that cannot be returned later even with the help of international law,” noted Igor Shchegolev.
He promised to think about the recommendations. But, apparently, even the liberal cabinet of ministers of Ukraine in this case will have to resort to state regulation of the radio frequency spectrum. Signal delivery is too expensive.
As a result, they decided to consult with business, and for this they agreed to hold a wide conference with the participation of authorities, academia and commercial companies on the development of digital television and radio broadcasting in the CIS.