Russia has decided to bring forward the deployment of the DVB-T2 standard from 2015 to this year.
According to AKTR and Tass Telekom, this follows a federal government decision taken earlier this month.
The first DVB-T2 broadcasts were started by RTRS in Tatarstan at the beginning of the month, reaching 1.5 million people within a 40-60km radius of the city of Kazan.
Six more launches are now planned by the end of this year, with a particular focus on the Krasnodar, Volgograd, Rostov and Pskov regions.
At year’s end, DVB-T2 services should be able to reach 70% of Russia’s population.