During 2007 digital TV in Ukraine has taken a major step forward and companies already established in the market are starting to reap the benefits of their investments in marketing. In Ukraine alone there are 17mln TV households!
DTH – 3 operators have announced their intention to launch a DTH service to the Ukraine population of over 43 million people. Poverkhnost is already transmitting DVB-S services including 2 HD channels. DataGroup has launch DTH in HD standard.
Vision TV is preparing for a launch later this year.
If the Ukraine DTH market is anywhere near as successful as DTH launches in Poland and Romania, we predict to see 850,000 new subscribers in the next 3 years and 2.5mln in 5 years.
Digital Cable has now commenced in 5 Ukraine cities with different operators including Kiev, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Krivoy Rog, Odessa. With a high CATV penetration in Ukraine, digital TV is expected to grow significantly.
DTT trials commenced this year as part of the governments commitment to achieve Analogue switch off by 2015. Licenses and commercial launch will need to take place next year and the vendor selection process has started.
IPTV – 4 of the largest Telco’s in Ukraine have started IPTV trials this year – Ukrtelecom, Golden Telecom, Comstar, Telesystems.
WiMax, including mobile WiMax is developing a great interest in Ukraine due to available licenses and frequencies; The ‘Wireless Ukraine’ association is a fast growing organization pushing this forward.