Does the current televoting system complicate Kazakhstan’s possible Eurovision debut?

Kazakhstan debuted in their very first Eurovision event three years ago at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2018 and since then, many of us are still wondering why the country hasn’t made an appearance at Senior Eurovision yet. There are some theories which attempt to explain this situation, one of them related to the telephone infrastructures.

This week we have known that the Minister of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry of Kazakhstan, Bagdat Musin, has announced that the nation will have an independent telephone dialling code for the first time since the country’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Nowadays, Russia is sharing their international country code +7 with Kazakhstan and starting from 2023, Kazakhstan will move to their own prefix +997. This process to adapt the systems will be completed in 2025, when the Russian code for Kazakhstan will be defenitely dropped.

Taking that into account, could this be one of the reasons to explain the Kazakhstan absence at the adult version of the Eurovision Song Contest? Contrary to the latest editions of the Junior Eurovision, where viewers vote over the internet and for their representative, in the Senior Eurovision the public vote continues being provided by telephone calls or text messages and people can not vote for their own country.

So because of the current Kazakhstan’s phone system, the televoting could be a problem if the prefix shared with Russia allows Kazakh audience to vote for their country using the phone numbers from Russian television and in case that Russian spectators could also make use of the televoting numbers from Kazakhstan TV channel to support their act.

It is not certainly sure if Russian televoting numbers work in Kazakhstan and viceversa, but this hypothesis could maybe explain why Kazakhstan is not part of the Eurovision Song Contest although they show a huge interest in the event. Could this change in 2025 when Kazakhstan completes their telephone dialling international code independence?

Kazakhstan’s status at the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) with Khabar Agency is similar to Australia and both are associated members of the organisation. They can not be full active members because they are not located within the European Broadcasting Area and this means that they need a special invitation from the EBU to compete in any Eurovision event.

This fact creates another theory about Kazakhstan’s presence in the contest, where some people believe that the EBU considers unnecessary offering an invitation to Kazakhstan to appear in the adult version of Eurovision, due to the bigger numbers of participants being part of the show at this time.

Would you like to see Kazakhstan debuting and regularly participating in the Eurovision Song Contest? Do you think they would be as competitive as they are in Junior Eurovision? Let’s us know your opinion!

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