MTS set for digital move

Russia’s MTS will make digital TV services available across its entire network on July 1.

Quoted in Vedomosti, Dimtri Bagdasaryan, director of the company’s fixed line and TV business, said that MTS expects to have 500,000 digital subscribers by the end of 2012 – it served a total of 2.99 million homes at the beginning of this year – and to complete the transition to digital in 2014.

Set-top boxes are being made available for an affordable 1,000 rubles (€24.3) each, with the cost of receiving the basic channel package remaining unchanged.

Another source put the cost of upgrading MTS’s network at around 3 billion rubles, with 70-80% of the total being allocated to the purchase of receivers.