Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is the only country in Europe that does not have a digital television signal. Although BiH committed to digital BiH in 2006 through the Geneva Agreement, and the money for it was secured a long time ago, the project is still in limbo because it has been stalled for years in various ways, from the fact that no agreement could be reached on who will manage the equipment, to various political pressures and accusations that the tenders during the selection of the project holders were not fully accessible and transparent.
The ramp for the digitization of TV signals is currently being lowered by a consortium that filed a complaint because it was not awarded a contract to carry out the digitization process.
“We have funds for this project, it is 25 million BAM plus VAT. BiH was the first to provide it and was not able to implement it. The commission within the Ministry of Communications and Transport evaluated the tender and made a proposal to award the contract. However, due to the appeal the consortium that was not awarded the contract, this process is currently at the BiH Appeals Office”, recently said the Minister of Communications and Transport of BiH Edin Forto, who expressed the hope that after the dispute is resolved, BiH will finally get a digital television signal.
“If we contract it after the Appeals Office, the digitization process takes at least 18 months,” Forto said.
However, the question is when the dispute will be resolved in general, because the aforementioned appeal was received by the BiH Appeals Office only ten days ago.
The Regulatory Agency for Communications (RAK) of BiH told that the transition from analog to digital TV signal regarding Multiplex D should be completed by December 31st of this year. On the other hand, they claim that activities in the process of digitization of public RTV services in BiH are not within the competence of RAK BiH, but are regulated by a special decision of the Council of Ministers of BiH, Akta reports.
E.Dz.
