HAKOM: The Switching off of the Italian Transmitters Causing the Interference to the Reception of Croatian Television programs has started

ZAGREB, 11 November 2016 – Pursuant to the decisions of the Italian national authorities, Italian broadcasters have finally started switching off their internationally disharmonized transmitters on the channels used by the Republic of Croatia pursuant to the international agreements. Those transmitters have been causing interferences in the reception of the Croatian television channels. The closing of the interfering transmitters is being carried out through a process of voluntary switching off or switching the programs to other networks on the channels not causing interferences to the Croatian television channels. According to the announcements of the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, the first switching-off of the transmitters began in the regions of Friuli, Venetia Giulia, Veneto and Puglia, and the process should be completed during November. By switching-off the Italian transmitters the interferences should be removed  and the reception of  the Croatian programs in digital regions should be  improved D5  (Istria and Primorje-Gorski Kotar County) and D9 (Dubrovnik-Neretva) and partly in D8 (Split) and D7 (Zadar and Šibenik-Knin County).

The entire process is a result of HAKOM long-term efforts, which, in addition to numerous measuring activities and interferences reports, persistently emphasized the problem of interference eventually solving it by mutual cooperation with the international institutions. The measuring activity was carried out along the coastline and on the islands, from Savudrija in the north to Prevlaka in the south of the Republic of Croatia, where the noise was strong and within the last eight years more than 3900 interferences have been reported to the Italian administration with a request for their removal. The competent authorities of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Radio control Board (RRB) and Director of the Radio-communication Bureau (BR) were informed about the issue.

In addition to the bilateral negotiations with the Italian administration, by making great  efforts in the  ITU and with the accession of  Croatia into the European Union and the Working Group on Cross-border coordination in the Advisory Group for the radio frequency spectrum management policy of the European Commission, HAKOM has contributed, within the scope of international activities, to the launch of legislative and administrative changes in Italy, which were a precondition for the resolution of these long-term interference in the field of television. Apart from HAKOM, other state institutions of the Republic of Croatia and Italy were involved in the process of removing the interferences.

Within the last three years Italy has brought regulation and a special law according to which TV frequency plan has been amended and the frequencies  interfering the neighbouring countries have been  excluded,  the compensation fund has been  founded  and  the switching-off  procedure of distracting  transmitters has been  prescribed. All this resulted with the switch-off procedure which, according to the Italian plan, should be completed by the end of November. HAKOM is continuously monitoring the situation and the public will be informed about the outcome of these activities after the completion of the switch-off process