Last Wednesday Kyiv’s International Exhibition Center kicked off high-tech week. Producers exhibited new specialized television broadcasting equipment and technologies. A 300-sq. m. area was devoted to exhibit stands of 240 companies from eighteen countries, including Ukraine, Russia, Britain, Bulgaria, Israel, and Luxembourg. Among the novelties on display were sophisticated handling equipment and a large number of new foreign (mainly Russian and Bulgarian) television products and data transfer facilities (chiefly cable and Internet TV networks). The participants demonstrated HD1, Europe’s first high-definition television channel.
The exhibition showed that Ukraine clearly gives preference to cable television. Many foreign TV channels are prepared to cooperate with Ukrainian cable operators in order to air their programs in this country. The exhibition also presented a wide range of new digital television and radio gizmos. However, these systems are not very much in demand in Ukraine, at least at the current stage of technological development. “We are on the threshold of mass-scale digitalization, but at the moment our systems cannot afford this luxury,” said Ivan Chyzh, head of the State Committee for Television and Radio and chairman of the exhibition’s organizing committee, in an interview with The Day.
Apart from television and radio broadcasting equipment, the exhibition featured the latest achievements in telecommunications and information technologies. Among the participants were Ukrainian leaders in this field: Ukrtelekom, UTEL, Ukrposhta, Kyivstar JSM, as well as major foreign companies, such as Panasonic (Japan), Siemens (Germany), Lucent Technologies (Switzerland), and others.
Asked why this kind of exhibition is being held in Ukraine for the second time, exhibition co-organizer Ross Tolby, chairman of the board of directors of ITE Group Plc. (UK), said that Ukraine has a very high potential for the development of television and radio broadcasting technologies. Since the Ukrainian services market is still underutilized, this is opening up broad horizons for investors, including those from abroad.
