"Finance" (Moscow)
May 19, 2003

Business television channel to be launched this summer

The RBC-TV project, whose outlooks have aroused serious speculation for a long time, will be launched, all the same. Moreover, this event will take place not in fall, when a new television broadcasting season traditionally starts in Russia, but at the beginning of this summer, and in fall 2003 it will be accessible on the Internet.

The new television channel will start broadcasting at the end of June, RBC-TV's Executive Director Oleg Borisovsky announced during the presentation of a joint project with MTU-Intel for providing interactive television to corporate clients who have ADSL Internet access.

Television broadcasting of this specialized business television channel will be provided in large Russian cities via Mostelecom, Comcor-TV, NTV+, Kosmos-TV, Divo-TV networks, via regional decimeter and meter wavelengths and cable networks. So far, representatives of RBC-TV have provided no information as to the volume of investments in the project. In March 2003, they announced the attraction of $15m. Meanwhile, MTU-Intel will require significantly less investment for organizing the broadcasting of RBC-TV through its broadband access networks. According to MTU-Intel General Director Nikolay Repin, this will require up to $100,000. Total investments of the company in the development of interactive broadcasting on the Internet with the ADSL technology will reach about $1m.