President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: I have brought you all together today to talk about the development of digital broadcasting. I know that quite recently [Deputy Prime Minister] Mr Sobyanin held a meeting on this, and other events devoted to the subject have taken place; we have also met and talked about it fairly recently. I especially wanted to highlight the fact that this issue remains a crucial one and is under presidential control.
I think that today we need to discuss the options and parameters of a Federal Target Programme – things that we talked about a long time ago – and some conceptual approaches on which there are different points of view, to say the least. Our task is to choose the approach that is the best for our nation, for the industry, and most importantly, the best for our citizens. We have talked about this more than once during our previous meetings. The challenge of making the transition to digital [broadcasting] is a problem of technological breakthrough, if you like. It also links well with the work that we'll be involved in within the relevant commission on the nation’s technological development and innovation policies [the Presidential Commission on Modernisation and Technological Development of Russia's Economy]. At the end of the day this so-called breakthrough must be as convenient as possible for citizens, increase the diversity of what is available on TV and, naturally, improve its quality. Along with this it should not create any additional problems.
These objectives remain unchanged. As for tactics and how to achieve these goals we’ll talk about this today. Thank you.