The Communications Commission has published the second media monitoring report for the 2019 midterm parliamentary elections, midterm Assembly elections and extraordinary elections of mayors of municipalities, covering the period between 31 March and 19 May 2019. 21 broadcasting channels and radio broadcasters were monitored during the reporting period. During the monitoring process, the Commission election advertising, election debates, news and political programmes, as well as public opinion...

To promote media literacy in Georgia, The European Council and the Georgian National Communications Commission organised a working meeting with representatives from state bodies, international organisations, NGOs and scientific circles. This is the first time that a meeting of such magnitude took place on the subject of media literacy in Georgia. The European Council invited media literacy expert and national coordinator for Media Literacy Ireland Martina Chapman to attend the meeting. Ms...

The Communications Commission has published its 2018 activity report. Apart from the significant projects implemented in 2018, the report also talks about the challenges and plans for the following year. 2018 was full of interesting challenges and successes for the telecommunications industry. Authorised entities from the electronic communications sector collected GEL 1,237 million in revenues, compared to GEL 1,220 million in 2017. The number of fixed internet users continues to grow. Internet...

Broadcasting revenues are stable and have not decreased as claimed by the Forbes magazine and the bm.ge agency in the article titled “Television Revenues Have Fallen.” The 2018 data about broadcasting revenues that was published by the Communications Commission was reproduced with errors by the aforementioned media sources. The Commission has contacted the media organisations and asked for the errors to be corrected, but this has not yet happened. We must therefore inform the public...

The number of Georgian families using fixed internet continues to grow. The fixed internet penetration figure for the first quarter of 2019 was 74%, which is 7% more than during the same period last year. Total revenues of mobile communication companies increased by 3% during the first quarter, which was conditioned by a 12% increase in revenues from legal entities. The revenue increase applies both to sound services and mobile internet services. According to the Q1 figures for 2019, the number...

The Communications Commission has completed its research on the mobile communication market, based on which it took several important decisions to protect consumer interests and develop the market. Thus, the Commission sharply reduced the wholesale price of global internet and imposed an upper tariff limit. From 1 July 2019, the price of 1 MB/sec will be GEL 9 instead of GEL 32. As for the retail service market segments, the study determined that this market is competitive and requires no...

During the first quarter of 2019, broadcasting advertising revenues grew by 8% year-on-year. Time allotted to commercial advertising also increased by 25% in Q1 compared to the same period last year. All national broadcasters reported growing advertising revenues with the exception of the Georgian Public Broadcaster, where revenues fell by 52%. This is an interesting development, as GPB’s revenues decreased despite the changes to the Law of Georgia on Broadcasting coming into effect,...

The Communications Commission and the Media Academy, together with the Ministry of Education, will organise the media literacy competition “Truth or Fiction?” that is designed to develop critical thinking, analysis and fact-checking skills among youngsters. Applications are open from 16 May until 14 June 2019. As part of the competition, participants are required to identify fake news in Georgian media space (including the internet, television and print media) that has not yet been...

The Georgian National Communications Commission organised a two-day conference in Tbilisi involving regulators of electronic communications from the Eastern Partnership (EaPeReg) and European Union (BEREC) countries. This was the first time that the heads of 19 European regulatory commissions met in Georgia. The two-day meeting discussed the existing challenges in the field of electronic communications, as well as plans for the future. The conference was attended by the Vice Chair of BEREC...

The Georgian National Communications Commission has conducted an analysis of free and paid televised political advertising during the 2018 Georgian presidential election campaign. According to Article 50.1 of the Election Code of Georgia, a broadcast license holder, an authorised over-the-air broadcaster, the Public Broadcaster and Adjara TV and Radio of the Public Broadcaster must, if airtime is allotted for pre-election campaigning and political advertising, publicly announce and weekly...