In almost all Member States the "established" free private channels, which developed in the mid-80s, are facing the competition of a new type of operator, both free and pay TVs, arriving on the market through the traditional terrestrial broadcasting pathway (Channel 5 in UK, Nelonen in Finland) or, more often, through cable and/or satellite.

Also, retransmission services, which aggregate TV and radio channels into packages, are increasingly provided under technologies other than cable (for example IPTV), but the current rules facilitating rights' clearance for operators are limited to cable retransmissions and the operators of services relying on increasingly used and equivalent technologies (for example, IPTV providers) cannot benefit from them.

5. Regrets that some Member States have still not yet provided all the information requested, particularly as regards satellite and/or cable TV channels, which are often left out of national reports; considers that the Commission has a responsibility to ensure that the Member States comply with their obligations and that it should do more than just stress that the notification requirement applies to all television programmes under the competence of a Member State; and calls on the Commission and the competent national authorities to impose clear sanctions in the event of persistent failure to comply with the relevant provisions or with ...[+++] its obligation to forward information;

5. Regrets that some Member States have still not provided all the relevant information, particularly as regards satellite and/or cable TV channels, which are often omitted from national reports; considers that the Commission has a responsibility to ensure that the Member States comply with their obligations and that it should do more than merely stress that the notification requirement applies to all television programmes under the jurisdiction of a Member State; and calls on the Commission and the competent national authorities to impose clear sanctions in the event of persistent failure to comply with the relevant provisions or with ...[+++] the obligation to supply information;

M. whereas all cable operators are persecuted for transmitting the foreign channels not approved by the Belarussian Government; whereas on this basis Belarussian cable TV operators have been banned from broadcasting all Ukrainian channels as well as the Polish channel Polonia,

With the exception of certain national markets, existing cable TV networks need costly upgrades to support two ways broadband communications, and, compared with xDLS technologies, they do not offer a guaranteed bandwidth since customers share the same cable channel.