Opposition main spokesman for communications Michael Farrugia said it had been planned that digital television would be introduced in Malta by 2010. However, Malta was still discussing this Bill when all EU member states had to switch to digital television by 2012.
In 2006, the Malta Communications Authority’s target was to obtain the frequencies allocated to Malta and possibly other frequencies. Yet, during negotiations, they failed to achieve this and instead Malta did not even manage to acquire the originally planned number of frequencies.
The MCA and the Broadcasting Authority agreed that PBS would be in charge of the free-to-air stations. Why hadn’t the authorities granted permission for individual television stations to transmit digitally themselves, asked Dr Farrugia. This was an option which had been set aside because Malta did not have enough frequencies.
Why were free-to-air broadcasters now being reduced to content providers? Again, this was due to the number of limited frequencies. Mr Farrugia questioned whether the minister at the time had taken action against the situation which led Malta to acquiring fewer frequencies.
While other countries were considering changing to high definition, Malta was still discussing digital standard definition.
Back in 2004, the MCA had listed four options for the transition to the digital system. The first option was for broadcasters to be in control of their own transmissions. The second was for broadcasters to form a consortium and operate the network, all costs being shared. The third option was that the government would build the required infrastructure and transmit in the same way as the master antenna. The final option was to use an infrastructure where stations would transmit through a network operator and broadcaster and pay the network operator for expenses incurred.
The specifications for digital TV stated that transmissions should be un-cryptic and free-to-air. The transmission would use a standard picture, mpeg2 for television and mpeg1 for radio. Although other countries were using mpeg4, Malta had decided to go for the outdated mpeg2. Furthermore, many EU television stations were already switching over to high definition television.
Dr Farrugia said Malta needed more frequencies. The picture offered would not be excellent since the more channels compressed on the same frequency, the less clear the picture. Malta was also facing the problem of interference from Italian stations using the Maltese frequencies. He urged the government to take this matter seriously.
The EU stated that channel 66 should be released by 2013 in order for this to be used for wireless broadband. This posed a problem for Malta since this was the frequency used by Go to transmit free-to-air channels. What was the government doing in such a situation?
Dr Farrugia said television stations using the digital system would now have to pay €16,000 a year. There hadn’t been many discussions regarding this matter.
PBS would now be getting an annual income of €96,000. Over seven years, stations would have paid a total of €672,000. Mr Farrugia said that it would have made more sense for stations to operate individually since the expenses over seven years would have amounted to much less.
The government had said that PBS would not be making any profit from this income. Mr Farrugia said that, since stations were being forced to pay large sums of money, it should be made clear who was profitting from this situation. How much would PBS be paying Go to use their infrastructure? He asked Parliamentary Secretary Mario de Marco, who was piloting the Bill, to elaborate on this during the winding up.
Go and Melita had different capabilities and thus there was no competition. Furthermore, service providers abroad offered services such as video-on-demand and e-mail-on-screen which were still unheard of in Malta. If one of the service providers had to offer such services, it would be in a dominant position and it would make competition difficult. What would be the government’s position in such a situation?
Turning to state stations, Dr Farrugia said that the situation was ambiguous. These stations, which were publicly funded, were politically biased and many programmes left much to be desired. Moreover a minister’s comments were always broadcasted while those of a shadow minister were totally ignored. The government should also explain why some people were being asked to pay their television licence while others were not. Before the election, the government had promised that the television licence would be removed.
Mr Farrugia said that he hoped that certain arrangements which were currently under way would not be a government’s ploy to be able to retain some form of control of the broadcasting sector should it lose the next general election.