The Ukrainian National Council on Television and Radio has introduced new must-carry rules for the country’s cable operators.
According to Kommersant, they will in future be required to carry what is described as a ‘benefits’ package containing all 32 channels licensed for digital broadcasting.
The move will be blow to analogue cable operators, who can only offer viewers a maximum of 50-60 channels and will now have to provide over half of these free of charge.
Unlike in most other European countries and the US, channels distributed in Ukraine have to pay for their carriage on cable networks.
Operators may now seek higher fees from these channels in order to make up the revenue shortfall from having to offer 32 channels for free.
Ukraine is expected to complete the transition to digital broadcasting in 2015.