A meeting of the Audiovisual Council of the Republic of Azerbaijan was held

A meeting of the Audiovisual Council of the Republic of Azerbaijan was held on June 14, 2023. A number of issues were discussed at the meeting.

First, there was a discussion of applications submitted to the Council for obtaining licenses. The legal service of the Council had reviewed the applications and documents for obtaining licenses have been received during April and May of this year, and submitted them to the members of the Council for discussion. As a result of the discussions, the relevant decisions were made to grant "Neftçi Media" LLC (TV channel "Neftchi TV"), "TVNET Telecom" LLC (TV channels "TVNET Kino" and "TVNET Sport") licenses of platform broadcaster not performing satellite broadcasting. Also by the relevant decisions of the Council universal platform operator licenses were issued to the "AzəriGlobalServis" CJSC (operator service name "AGS TV") and "A2Z Technologies" CJSC (operator service name "AzNet").

Then, the issue of ensuring and developing television and radio broadcasting in the territory of the Karabakh and Eastern Zangezur economic regions was considered. In order to expand the coverage area of FM terrestrial radio broadcasting in this region, as well as taking into account the appeals received by the Council from “Azerbaijan Television and Radio Programs” CJSC and “Public Television and Radio Broadcasting Company”, it was decided to allocate frequencies of 105.0 MHz for “Radio Azerbaijan” and 90.0 MHz for "Public Radio" for broadcasting from the Radio-Television Broadcasting Station (RTBS) located on the territory of the Lachin district, as well as the frequency of 90.0 MHz for "Public Radio" for broadcasting from the RTBS "Kalbajar", located on the territory of the Kalbajar district. Also, the 27^th TV transmission channel has been allocated from RTBS located in the territory of Lachin district to carry out free-to-air terrestrial digital broadcasting of nationwide television channels.

Later, in order to effectively use radio frequencies for television broadcasting on the territory of Baku city and based on information received from the State Administration of Radio Frequencies, the issue of free and usable 33^rd and 36^th TV transmission channels broadcasting from the "Baku TeleTower Complex" was discussed. Guided by the Articles 34.1, 50.5 and 51.1 of the Law of the Republic of Azerbaijan "On Media", the Council decided to announce a competition for the provision of those TV transmission channel for the use of multiplex operators providing paid digital terrestrial television retransmission services.