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Scroll down page or click below for news - latest first
Tuesday
Friday 9th February
Sky plans pay-DTT
Google: Internet TV could jam net
Virgin Media launches
News Corp down on trad TV
Diller disses YouTube
DIRECTV Q4 Numbers
Spain sets up HDTV forum
RAI International to relaunch in June
IP STB demand growing
France 24 goes Orange
Vodafone and Orange to merge 3G networks
BT broadband lead
Sky plans pay-DTT
From Colin Mann in LondonAlmost as if to steal the thunder from the launch of Virgin Media’s ‘quad play’, Sky announced that it is developing plans for the launch of a subscription television service on digital terrestrial television (DTT) for summer 2007. The new service will allow customers to receive some of Sky's most popular programmes - including sport and movies – via a DTT box for a monthly subscription.
Sky aims to create more choice for customers who are interested in upgrading from free-to-air to pay-TV. The company suggests that this represents an attractive commercial opportunity, benefiting from existing investments in programming and infrastructure, and attracting new customers to Sky over and above current plans for the growth of Sky's satellite service.
The line-up of channels on the new service will offer a range of content including sports, movies, entertainment and news. The sports service will include live coverage from the Barclays Premiership and other top events. Full details, including branding, pricing and the complete channel line-up, will be revealed closer to launch. The inclusion of Premiership football is in response to the threat from Setanta Sport, which acquired one of the live action packages that Sky didn’t win, and which days previously revealed that its package would be available on Freeview for £11 (E16) a month.
Sky’s new service will make use of existing capacity that Sky currently uses to broadcast Sky Three, Sky News and Sky Sports News on the ‘Freeview’ DTT platform. As a result, these channels will cease to be available free-to-air via DTT in advance of the launch of the pay-TV service.
Sky confirmed that the new pay-TV service would use a conditional access (CA) system similar to the one that Sky uses for its satellite television service, provided by its NDS subsidiary. To access the service, customers will buy a new set-top box that includes the relevant CA software and MPEG-4 decoder. It is anticipated that once the service launches multiple manufacturers will have the opportunity to produce compatible set-top-boxes and other DTT receivers.
Google: Internet TV could jam net
Internet TV services such as Joost and YouTube may bring the global network to its knees was the surprising message from YouTube parent Google to the Cable Europe Congress. Vincent Dureau, Google's head of TV technology, said the Internet was not designed for TV. "The Web infrastructure, and even Google's (infrastructure) doesn't scale. It's not going to offer the quality of service that consumers expect."
Google instead offered to work together with cable operators to combine its technology for searching for video and TV footage and its tailored advertising with the cable networks' high-quality delivery of shows. One cable chief executive, Duco Sickinghe from Belgian operator Telenet, said it was "the best news of the day" to hear that Google could not scale for video.
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Virgin Media launches
From Colin Mann in London
Virgin Media, the quadruple play UK operator created through the £4 billion (E5.8bn) merger of ntl and Telewest in 2006 and acquisition of Virgin Mobile in July 2006 has launched, pledging to shake up the industry and to offer consumers quality, value, innovative products and outstanding customer service.
The new company also revealed plans to launch a new, interactive cable channel on February 20 -Virgin Central –which aims to combine the simplicity of a traditional channel with the choice and control of next generation TV-on-demand technology.
Virgin Media also announced plans to extend its reach nationally by rolling services out into non-cable areas in 2007, enabling it to compete on a level playing field with key competitors for the first time ever by reaching over 97% of UK households. It is currently in talks with wholesale broadband suppliers aimed at furthering its ‘off-net’ reach. An IPTV service was likely from 2008
Steve Burch, chief executive officer said the new company would be "very much a serious rival to Sky. We were the first with a triple play, which people scoffed at initially, and has been very successful." Chairman Jim Mooney suggested that Sky overcharged for sports and movies, and that Virgin Media would go after that business very vigorously. "There’s a soft underbelly we can attack," he added.
Virgin Media is currently disputing the competition implications of rival Sky’s 17.9 per cent holding in commercial broadcaster ITV. Burch said that Ntl Telewest’s own thwarted take-over of ITV would have given them "another product opportunity. In the meanwhile, The company’s existing programming arm, Flextech Television, is to be renamed Virgin Media Television.
Virgin Media has almost 10 million customers across the country (5m cable, 4.5m mobile, 250,000 virgin.net). Most of Virgin Media's TV, broadband and home phone services are distributed across a high-speed cable network which reaches 12.5 million (predominantly urban) households. An investment programme is currently underway to extend the quadplay offer to the whole country in 2007.
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News Corp down on trad TV
News Corporation said announced quarterly profit fell 24 percent from a year earlier, when it had a one-time gain from asset sales. Revenue rose 18 per cent but net income declined to $822 million, or from $1.08 billion a year earlier. Revenue in the second quarter rose to $7.8 billion from $6.7 billion.
Films, DVDs and revenue from MySpace, News Corporation’s social-networking Web site, made up for losses at MyNetwork TV Revenue from the unit that includes MySpace rose to $518 million from $367 million. But profit at Fox Broadcasting fell 39 per cent, to $112 million. This was mainly down to the launch of an ambitious television network on a number of its stations that previously had aired programming from the defunct UPN Network. MyNetworkTV, which bet on English-language versions of Hispanic "telenovela" soap operas, has some of the lowest ratings in television -- far below those of the newly launched CW Television Network owned by CBS and Time Warner. MyNetworkTV's losses are estimated at $2 million a week.
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Diller disses YouTube
InterActiveCorp. CEO Barry Diller has sided with Viacom on its demand that YouTube pull down all Viacom clips from its site. "What’s happened is that media companies have said, "We’re not gonna let you get so strong in distribution,’" likening it to HBO’s dominance in acquiring movies for cable decades ago. "It’s smart for Viacom, who said, ‘Let me be really clear—you’re not gonna take stuff that I made, then massage it and control it for other people.'"
While acknowledging that YouTube rules the user-generated video space, Diller said that wouldn’t be for long. "Those tools are going to be everywhere," he said. "It’s not going to be one place to go."
Diller’s whose company posted an 85 per cent drop in net income, but he was bullish on IAC properties CollegeHumor.com, Ask.com and Match.com, while making a case for a Home Shopping Network rebound. "We took our eye off the daily business and made a series of merchandising mistakes," he said of HSN.
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DIRECTV Q4 Numbers
DIRECTV reported 275,000 net customer additions for the three-month period that ended Dec 31, putting the service's overall subscriber count at 15.95 million. Gross subscriber additions for the satellite TV giant numbered 1.021 million, an increase of 6 per cent when compared to fourth quarter 2005. The subscriber numbers were helped by a drop in monthly churn, which went from 1.7 per cent during the same period last year to 1.57 per cent for fourth quarter 2006. Also DIRECTV said about 200,000 customers were upgraded to HDTV during the fourth quarter.
DIRECTV said fourth quarter net income more than doubled to $356 million when compared to the same period last year. Fourth quarter revenues increased 16 per cent to $4.18 billion, the company said.
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Spain sets up HDTV forum
From David Del Valle in Madrid
The first official HDTV forum has been set up in Spain backed by the Ministry of Industry and the main HDTV players in the market.
The Forum is aimed at boosting HDTV in the country at a time when sales of HD-ready TV sets are booming with 1.8 million units sold in 2006.
The Forum, presided by the General Director of Telecommunications, Bernard Lorenzo, will produce a guide with information about HDTV, among other initiatives.
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RAI International to relaunch in June
Branislav Pekic from Rome
To reach more Italians living abroad with more news and programmes is the mission the new director of RAI International, Pier Badaloni, who described the channel as being "of strategic importance for RAI, Italy's channel in the world".
Badaloni’s wants to extend coverage to Europe and the whole of Asia. He admitted that there have been "many complaints" from viewers abroad, so talks are underway to improve signal distribution. At present, RAI International has 2 million subscribers and the signal can be received by 10 million people. The date scheduled for the relaunch of the channels is June 21.
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IP STB demand growing
Driven by increasing Telco TV deployments, demand for IP set top boxes is growing, and will reach 19 million units in 2010, up from 4.3 million in 2006, reports high-tech market research In-Stat . "There was consolidation in 2006, with Motorola buying Kreatel and Cisco integrating Scientific Atlanta with Linksys and KiSS," says Michelle Abraham, In-Stat analyst. "We see more definitive leaders emerging in IP set top boxes, though the leaders will differ by geography."
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France 24 goes Orange
Telecommunications operator Orange has signed an agreement with France 24 to broadcast the news channel as part of its TV on ADSL bundles in its foreign subsidiaries. Orange currently offers TV on ADSL in several countries including Spain, Poland, Mauritius and Senegal.
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Vodafone and Orange to merge 3G networks
Mobile-phone operator Vodafone and rival Orange, owned by France Telecom, plan to merge their 3G mobile-phone networks in Britain in a bid to cut costs. The scheme could be expanded to include their older networks where coverage in certain areas is patchy.
Vodafone and Orange hope to cut costs and make it more economically viable to offer 3G services. The companies would retain control of their respective backbone networks, which connect mobile-phone masts with billing systems and other platforms. Ofcom will have to approve the deal.
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BT broadband lead
BT’s share of the market for new broadband customers in the third quarter rose to 34 per cent, up from 25 per cent in the previous quarter, the highest level in over two years.
Despite competition it has added 237,000 new broadband customers last quarter thanks partly to BT Vision. Revenue from the division grew by 24 per cent to £233m (E350m).
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Thursday 8th February
Apple's Jobs calls on music industry to drop DRM
IPTV significant revenue within 3 years?
NBC’s Zucker lashes out at YouTube
Amazon teams with TiVo
Wal-Mart video downloads
T-Mobile TV trial popular
Spain's Supreme Court overrules CMT's cable decision
Cisco earnings surge
UTStarcom delivers IPTV Service in India
Beijing TV obtains China's 6th IPTV licence
O2TV attracts 20,000 customers
Cisco and SES Americom IPTV Solution
HdforAll seeks Freeview HD concessions
Home-movers key to telco video success
NDS increases Moscow involvement
MySpace partnership with Vodafone
Apple's Jobs calls on music industry to drop DRMApple’s Chief Executive Steve Jobs has called on the four major record companies to start selling songs online without digital rights management (DRM) copy protection software designed to thwart piracy.
Jobs said there appeared to be no benefit for the record companies in continuing to sell more than 90 per cent of their music without DRM on compact discs, while selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system.
"If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies," he said in a statement posted to his company's Web site.
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IPTV significant revenue within 3 years?An Accenture and Economist Intelligence Unit survey of nearly 350 executives from telecommunications, broadcasting and media companies across 46 countries in the Americas, Europe and Asia has revealed industry-wide confidence in the longer-term outlook for IPTV, with 60 per cent believing that IPTV will generate significant revenues within three years.
However, confidence in the short-term outlook remains mixed, with 52 per cent of respondents saying they are not confident in the ability of IPTV to generate significant revenues within the next 12 months. On the other hand, 20 per cent of respondents said they are confident or very confident, and 28 per cent said they are somewhat to fairly confident, that IPTV will generate significant revenues within 12 months.
When asked what they believed would be the principal revenue source for IPTV, 46 per cent of the industry executives surveyed selected advertising. However, network operators, as a subset of all respondents, disagreed - with 74 per cent of network operators saying they believe that subscription fees for premium content will provide the largest recurring revenue stream, followed by basic content subscription fees and then advertising fees.
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NBC’s Zucker lashes out at YouTubeChief executive of NBC Universal Jeff Zucker, has taken a swing at YouTube, accusing the online video site of failing to deploy its technology to protect the copyrighted materials of traditional media companies.
"YouTube needs to prove that it will implement its filtering technology across its online platform. It’s proven it can do it when it wants to," Zucker said, referring to the site’s controls to block pornography and hate speech. He added: "They have the capability. The question is whether they have the will."
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Amazon teams with TiVoAmazon and TiVo have begun testing a service that lets users watch videos rented or bought over the Internet directly on televisions, as part of a trend to link personal computers and TVs.
Amazon’s TiVo partnership extends the online retailer’s Unbox download service, and takes it one step further than online video stores like Wal-Mart’s or Apple’s iTunes, which are geared toward computers or portable devices.
Movies and TV shows from ‘Amazon Unbox on TiVo’ will be available to download to a customer’s TiVo box from computers for playback on their television set.
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US retail giant Wal-Mart has launched the beta version of its new video downloads service. The service, powered by HP Video Merchant Services, includes more than 3,000 movie and TV titles for customers to download for viewing on PCs, laptops and portable media players.
New movie releases are available for video download on the day of the DVD release and range from $12.88 (E10)- to $19.88, with catalogue titles starting at $7.50 and TV shows at $1.96 per episode. In addition to individual video downloads, Wal-Mart will continue to offer physical/digital movie bundles for select movie titles.
T-Mobile Czech Republic has published the results of the commercial testing of ‘its mobile TV service TV in your pocket’.
"The results of the testing confirmed that 'TV in your pocket' is quite popular with our customers and that it has great potential," says Jiri Dvorjancansky, Executive Vice President Marketing at T-õMobile Czech Republic, adding: "The commercial launch now only depends on the licensing process."
User behaviour during the testing confirmed expectations: Most respondents watched TV on their handsets at least once a day, largely when travelling by public transport or waiting in a queue. CT24 was the favourite TV channel, followed by Ocko, Filmbox and t-music.
Portability and picture quality were the most appreciated features, while limited coverage was perceived by customers as the biggest drawback. As far as payment methods are concerned, most customers prefer a fixed monthly fee for a package of channels while the majority of viewers are also interested in individual purchases of a selected channel.
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Spain's Supreme Court overrules CMT's cable decision
From David Del Valle in MadridThe Spanish Supreme Court has overruled the decision of the Telecommunications Market Commission (CMT) to provisionally suspend four articles of a recent Royal Decree whereby the cable technical rules were approved.
The CMT had appealed before the Court against a rule that liberalises cable TV and lays down the limits between the State and Spanish Regions (Comundidades Autonomas) arguing that the State was invading its jurisdiction regarding the awarding of TV and radio licences.
This is a new setback to CMT as it reduces its areas of competence.
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Cisco earnings surgeNetworking equipment maker Cisco Systems has reported that second quarter earnings surged from last year beat analysts' estimate, helped by strong demand for its Internet networking equipment and solid contribution from set-top box maker Scientific-Atlanta, which was acquired in February 2006.
The company said Scientific-Atlanta contributed $639 million (E492m) of net sales in the second quarter. Cisco closed its $6.9 billion acquisition of Scientific-Atlanta as part of its move to diversify away from its main business of providing switches and routers that direct computer traffic over corporate networks and the Internet.
Dennis Powell, chief financial officer, Cisco, said, "Cisco demonstrated continued strength of both our Cisco standalone business, with 18 per cent revenue growth year over year, and our Scientific Atlanta business, with 21 per cent growth year over year."
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UTStarcom delivers IPTV Service in India
IP end-to-end solutions and services provider UTStarcom has inked a three-year contract through its partnership with AKSH Optifibre Ltd. to deploy its RollingStream IPTV solution with Mahanagar Telephone Nigam in India. The contract represents the first commercial IPTV deployment in India and AKSH Optifibre is the first company to launch IPTV in India.
Beijing TV obtains China's 6th IPTV licence
Beijing TV Station has obtained China's sixth Internet Protocol TV licence. Based on the broadband network of Shanghai Telecom, Shanghai launched the country's first IPTV service in September (2006), which can offer live broadcast channels, interactive services and information services. It has 50 live broadcast channels and more than 1,000 hours of video-on-demand programmes.
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O2TV attracts 20,000 customersTelefónica O2 Czech Republic’s new fixed line television service 02TV has signed up 20,000 subscribers since it was launched on 1 September 2006.
When the service was launched O2TV was accessible via over a million fixed telephone lines in Prague, Brno, Ostrava, Olomouc, Pilsen, Liberec, Ceské Budejovice, and many other district towns. This has now increased to two million homes across the Czech Republic.
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Cisco and SES Americom IPTV SolutionCisco and SES Americom have confirmed an agreement to enable rural local exchange carriers (RLECs) in North America to cost-effectively offer IPTV to their subscribers using a solution that combines the Cisco IP Next-Generation Networks with SES Americom’s IP-PRIME IPTV service. The end-to-end offering processes content and television programming and distributes it via satellite to telecommunications companies and their IPTV consumers nationwide. Systems integration from both companies and their respective partners is an integral part of the offering.
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HdforAll seeks Freeview HD concessions
The HDforAll campaign, formed by a coalition made up of TV manufacturers, retailers and public service broadcasters (PSBs), is aiming to secure the future of
free-to-view high definition (HD) television programming on the UK digital terrestrial television platform (known as Freeview).
The campaign is concerned that plans by UK comms regulator Ofcom to auction all the spectrum released by digital switchover could jeopardise, for a generation, the only opportunity to launch a range of HD channels on Freeview. It would risk dividing viewers into the ‘HD haves’ and the ‘HD have nots’, according to their ability to pay for subscription television.Ofcom has suggested that the PSBs could launch HD services using their existing spectrum capacity. According to the campaign, this would not be technically feasible without sacrificing a number of existing services on the Freeview platform, thereby undermining the service viewers currently enjoy on Freeview.
There is no obvious way in which the UK PSBs providing free to air television channels could recoup the costs associated with an auction’ the campaign contends. They are thus at a disadvantage in competing with mobile operators and others, when those commercial operators can afford to pay a premium for spectrum in the knowledge that they can recoup the costs by providing a premium service to their customers.
HdforAll is supported by manufacturers and retailers of HD televisions including DSGI, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba and the public service broadcasters (BBC, ITV, Channel 4 & Five).
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Home-movers key to telco video successTelcos could make sizeable gains in the video services market if they target households that are moving or have recently moved, according to Parks Associates' latest project ‘Households on the Move’.
This survey found 45 per cent of the estimated 23 million U.S. households that move every 18 months make their first service call to the telephone company. In addition, most people switch video providers only when they move into a new home. These combined findings uncover a scenario where the telco giants could challenge cable and satellite operators in the pay-TV market by selling these callers a bundled package that includes video as well as voice services.
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NDS increases Moscow involvement
NDS, provider of technology solutions for digital pay-TV, has appointed Anastasia Sviridova to be its local marketing and business development representative for the Moscow region. She will be responsible for further development of existing business relationships as well as providing direct representation for new opportunities within the region.
NDS currently has two major operating customers in Russia, both based in Moscow. Sistema operates broadband pay-TV service Stream TV and Comcor TV is Moscow’s leading cable operator, with the service branded Akado.
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MySpace partnership with Vodafone
Vodafone customers are to be offered access to social networking site MySpace via their mobile phones. The deal marks the first extension of Fox Interactive Media's leading network of sites into the European mobile marketplace.
Launching first in the UK, the partnership will enable millions of Vodafone customers to access MySpace Mobile, allowing them to edit their own MySpace profiles, find and add friends, post photos and blogs and send and receive MySpace messages.
MySpace Mobile will be pre-loaded on future, selected Vodafone handsets and available for download from Vodafone live!.
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Wednesday 7th February
Long knives at Discovery
YouTube warns Japanese users
Cable Europe growth steady
Gazdag quits Disney
IPTV worldwide subscribers reach 3.6m
Freeview 2m Q4 sales
Online advertising will grow
Germany plans second 3G auction
Vivendi paints bright future
ITV sells stake in Liverpool FC
Industria and Inuk prepare IPTV rollout
Nagravision protects Vodafone mobile TV
Long knives at DiscoveryFive top executives at Discovery Communications are to leave in a shake-up by new CEO David Zaslav. Out immediately are Billy Campbell, president of Discovery Networks U.S.; Maureen Smith, general manager of Animal Planet Media; Dawn McCall, president of Discovery Networks International; and Pandit Wright, senior executive vice president of human resources. Discovery said David Abraham, president of TLC, will leave the company in March.
Zaslav, who came from NBC Universal, wants to strengthen some of Discovery's core brands, which include Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet and Travel Channel. Some advertisers have criticized the company in recent years for watering down its brands by launching new digital channels and favouring reality shows over educational documentaries.
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YouTube.com has agreed to display warnings on its site in Japanese not to upload copyright materials to the service. The decision comes as a part of ongoing negotiations between YouTube and the Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC), which has lobbied the site to erase 30,000 clips because of copyright infringement.
YouTube's popularity in Japan has surged in the past year because it lets users watch their favourite clips any time for free. In addition, local broadcasters had only offered a limited number of their shows on the Web.
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Cable Europe growth steadyECCA, at its Cable Europe convention, has released industry figures showing the growing depth of the industry. In six years, from 2000 to 2006, the European cable revenues in Europe have doubled from E9.4b to E18.8b. Broadband Internet and telephony services account for more than one third of the total revenue.
In the last two years, the number of digital TV subscribers has doubled, reaching 11 million subscribers in 2006. Year-onyear Europe had a 53 per cent increase in digital cable TV subscribers. Accelerating Growth in Telephony Cable telephony services, showed a 21.6 per cent year-on-year growth in subscribers. For 2007, an even stronger growth is expected with VoIP cable telephony as the main driver. Today, there are 10 million+ cable telephony subscribers in Europe.
In markets with a strong cable industry, broadband Internet penetration is higher. Compared to 2005, cable Internet shows +6 per cent year-on-year growth. This sustained the strong growth trends of recent years. Cable had a total of 13 million Internet subscribers at year-end 2006 in Europe.
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Gazdag quits DisneyWalt Disney Internet European Managing director Attila Gazdag has left the company to "pursue other interests," the company said. Gazdag, who joined the unit in 2001, will be replaced on an interim basis by Mark Handler, executive VP and MD of WDIG International.
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IPTV worldwide subscribers reach 3.6m
IPTV research from Canalys shows most major incumbent telecoms providers have launched commercial services and the market is becoming increasingly competitive with the entry of alternative operators, such as ISPs and energy companies.
Canalys estimates that the total number of IPTV subscribers worldwide reached 3.6 million by the end of 2006, with Western Europe leading the way and accounting for 2.4 million. The top three providers globally according to Canalys are PCCW (Hong Kong) on 18.2 per cent share, France Telecom with 16.8 per cent and Free Telecom on 14 per cent. These are joined in the top five by Telefonica and Fastweb.
In 2007 Canalys predicts significant uptake of IPTV in the Asia Pacific region. Hong Kong is already a mature IPTV market, and growth will come from emerging markets such as China and India, following large investments into IPTV deployments there. Australia is also finally moving into the commercial phase of its IPTV offerings, which will lead to fast roll-outs of services in 2007. North America will be another major growth area, with AT&T and Verizon already pushing nationwide roll-outs of IPTV services. Western Europe though will continue to lead and set the pace globally for the IPTV industry in the year ahead.
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Freeview 2m Q4 salesFreeview has confirmed over two million digital boxes and digital televisions sold during the Q4 2006. The sales continue the service’s strong take-up, with 15 million sales since launch in October 2002.
With the forthcoming consumer launch of Freeview Playback - the new digital TV recorder brand, sales of these products and growth of the category are expected to continue.
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Online advertising spending in the United States will grow 18 per cent this year, faster than in any other media, and Internet search advertising alone will grow 39 percent, according to market research company Outsell. Advertising spending on TV and radio will decline by about 3.5 per cent, the report also said.
Outsell's report was based on a survey of over 1,000 U.S. advertisers who collectively control about $6.5 billion in ad spending. Other ad forecasters are also predicting rapid growth in online advertising spending. At the end of last year the British ad company ZenithOptimedia predicted that global Internet ad spending would grow 28.2 per cent this year.
Germany plans second 3G auction
Germany's telecommunications watchdog plans to hold a second auction for third-generation mobile phone licences in 2008. Six telecoms players spent E51 billion in 2000 on licences for third-generation mobile telephony in Germany, but only four incumbent mobile operators were able to carry their plans out after the crash in telecoms shares in 2002.
Vivendi is sticking to its forecast of a record E2.6 billion profit in 2006, outlined by chairman and CEO Jean-Bernard Levy, despite the higher than expected cost of the Canal Plus/TPS merger.
The merger will affect operating profits by E50 million spread over financial years 2006 and 2007, while sacrificing E120 million from 2006 profits. Profits in 2007 should match those in 2006, Levy said. Levy's comments came after Vivendi published a lower than expected 1.2 per cent hike in its 2006 revenues last week, to E5.54 billion.
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ITV sells stake in Liverpool FC
ITV has given an undertaking to sell its 9.99 per cent shareholding in Liverpool Football Club at a price of £5,000 (E6700) per share yielding about £17.4m. The club is being sold to George Gillett Jnr and Tom Hicks, US sports entrepreneurs.
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Industria and Inuk prepare IPTV rollout
IPTV solutions and software specialist Industria has confirmed that Inuk Networks will deploy Industria’s Zignal IPTV solution as an integral element of the Inuk Freewire TV platform. As part of this, Inuk Networks, a supplier of triple-play services to consumers, service providers and network operators, will licence Industria’s Zignal IPTV service management platform as it looks to build increased functionality and system management into its IPTV offering.
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Nagravision protects Vodafone mobile TVNagravision has been selected by Vodafone Italy to protect the content rights for its Digital Video Broadcasting Handheld (DVB-H) mobile TV service - Vodafone SKY TV. Nagravision’s access rights system will secure access to mobile TV channels for Vodafone customers wishing to watch TV using their mobiles.
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Tuesday 6th February
Tiscali TV launches with free calls offer
Pace returns to profit
Ericsson and Turner mobile services
Six analogue channels a must for China
Setanta goes Freeview
Sky Italia hit by football stoppage
Telcos unite for mobile search engine
Zucker for NBCU
Distrivision extends DTT, local deals
DMGI new video distribution partners
C4 iPod rival
Alcatel-Lucent selected by Mostelecom
Twofour video content for AOL
Tiscali TV launches with free calls offer
From Colin Mann in LondonISP Tiscali has revealed its plans for the launch and national roll out of Tiscali TV in the UK, following the acquisition of the Homechoice IPTV service in August 2006. Tiscali TV launches on 1 March 2007 when over 40,000 Homechoice subscribers will become Tiscali TV customers and immediately benefit from the new offer of broadband plus TV for £14.99 (E23). Tiscali also revealed plans to launch a new 160Gb, HD-enabled, PVR set-top box in July 2007.
Tiscali TV is currently available in London and the town of Stevenage but will be available outside London in Birmingham, Edinburgh and Newcastle during April and May, and in areas of Leeds, Sheffield and Liverpool by mid-year. By the end of 2007 Tiscali TV will be available to a footprint of over 10 million UK homes. The roll out will continue through 2008 and the TV service will be available to Tiscali’s entire unbundled local loop network by the end of 2008.
Tiscali is also offering a ‘value’ triple play package aimed at taking on similar cable offering. For £19.99 the customer will get 2Mb broadband, the TV pack, line rental and free weekend telephone calls. The entry-level cable triple play package offered by ntl:Telewest is £30.
Mary Turner, Chief Executive Tiscali UK, suggested there was "a real gap in the market" for Tiscali’s TV product, adding that the success of Freeview had shown that customers wanted more than five channels but didn’t necessarily want to pay a high monthly subscription.
Tiscali’s broadband service is delivered via ADSL lines from incumbent telco BT’s local telephone exchanges. As well as competing against cable, the service is also up against digital satellite operator Sky’s ‘See, Speak, Surf’ combination of TV, telephony and broadband product available via its Sky Broadband offering ,and BT’s own BT Vision IPTV service launched in December 2006.
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Pace returns to profit
From Colin Mann in LondonDigital TV set-top-box specialist Pace Micro Technology has returned to profitability, with US sales contributing over 50 per cent of revenue. Revenue for the half year to 2 December 2006 more than doubled to £180.2 million (E270 million) compared with £78.9 million in 2005. Profit before tax and restructuring costs was £1.4 million, compared with a loss of £8.9 million the previous year.
The company said that the progress in the US confirmed Pace's long-term strategy to target the world's largest digital TV market. Pace continues to deliver its high definition (HD) MPEG-4 personal video recorder (PVR) to DirecTV and a growing number of US cable operators have purchased Pace's HD PVR. Shipments into the Americas increased significantly to 0.6 million compared with 0.1 million for 2005 as Pace commenced deliveries to DirecTV and Comcast, two of the world’s largest pay TV operators.
At the same time Pace’s US customer base has expanded, with over 20 further cable operators. This is in addition to ongoing business with Rogers and Vidéotron in Canada. According to Pace, the digital television market well positioned for growth resulting from government digital switchover plans in a number of countries.
Chairman Mike McTighe told advanced-television.com that the company was also monitoring the market opportunities for IPTV as telcos increasingly compete with cable and satellite triple play offerings. McTighe remained confident that progress would continue with Pace "on track" to meet its expectations for the 2006/07 financial year.
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Ericsson and Turner mobile servicesAs part of a wide-ranging deal, Ericsson and Turner are collaborating to develop Turner's internet, broadcast news and entertainment content - including CNN International, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim material - for mobile multimedia environments.
The first of these jointly developed services will launch in Europe on February 12 at the 3GSM World Congress bringing a new CNN Mobile service to the users initially in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
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Six analogue channels a must for China
China's TV regulator the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) has required that all cable TV operators must provide at least six channels of analogue programmes for the public when they digitise their services.
China is promoting digital cable television in 25 cities. Qingdao, Hangzhou, Dalian, Shenzhen, Taiyuan, Nanjing and Nanning, have switched from analogue cable TV to digital cable TV and digital cable TV subscribers have surpassed 12 million, according to SARFT.
China plans to replace the existing analogue cable television with digital cable television in all the cities in its eastern and central regions and most of those in the western area by 2010, according to a national five-year (2006-2010) guideline.
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Satellite channel Setanta, which secured rights to broadcast live Premier League football in May 2006, will be available on Freeview later this year for £11 (E16) a month.
The move will represent a challenge to BSkyB, which has used its exclusive football rights to establish a dominant position in the UK pay-TV market. Sky's premium package, which enables subscribers to watch live Premier League matches, costs around £40 a month, although that includes hundreds of additional channels. Additionally, Premplus matches cost viewers £8 each.
Setanta will broadcast 46 Monday night and Saturday evening games, which are not available on Sky. Its £10.99 monthly rate is described as an 'introductory offer'.
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Telcos unite for mobile search engine
Some of the world’s largest telcos are coming together to create a mobile phone search engine to rival Google and Yahoo!, according to UK press. Reports say European giants including Vodafone, Telecom Italia, Hutchison Whampoa, France Telecom, Deutsche Telecom, Telefonica and US company Cingular are due to hold talks at the 3GSM industry trade show in Barcelona. Declining revenues from call charges have persuaded network operators to look to the lucrative search engine advertising market.
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Sky Italia hit by football stoppageNews Corp's pay-TV unit Sky Italia is concerned by the impact on its business of a lengthy suspension of Italian football games, said La Stampa. All Italian football games have been cancelled indefinitely by the football authorities after the death of a policeman in violence after a Serie A game in Catania, Sicily.
'I admit, that not having the championship for two or three days (of games) would be heavy for us,' said Sky director Giovanni Bruno, 'Generalist TV channels can substitute games with a good film, while for us we don't have this possibility,' he said.
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Jeff Zucker will be named as successor to Bob Wright as chief executive of NBC Universal, the GE entertainment division. Zucker, 41, has long been regarded as most likely to succeed his boss, who had been head of the network for 21 years and oversaw its expansion into a media force with cable assets, a Spanish-language network, a film studio and theme park.
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Distrivision extends DTT, local deals
Distrivision.tv, Spainish supplier of programme packages to local networks has clinched deals with Grupo Rey y Asociados for Aragon, a region in northeastern Spain, and Canal 9 in the Canary Islands. Grupo Rey runs an analogue TV net in Zaragoza and will launch digital terrestrial television operations across Aragon this year. Analogue web Canal 9, which hopes to snag a DTT licence, broadcasts in Las Palmas, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. The two deals boosts Distrivision's DTT deals across Spain to fourteen, which together represents 80 per cent of the territory.
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DMGI new video distribution partners
Digital Music Group, a content owner and leader in the digital distribution of independently owned music, television, film and video, has confirmed a new set of video channel partners, including In2TV, BitTorrent, and Movielink. As part of the agreements, the retail outlets have agreed to distribute videos from DMGI's catalogue through their respective video distribution services.
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Channel 4 is teaming up with Korean electronics manufacturer iRiver to create a rival to the iPod. The device, called the B20, will also include a radio receiver. The move is seen as part of the broadcaster’s bid to enter the digital radio arena, and leading UK radio stations are reported to have agreed to test the device.
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Alcatel-Lucent selected by MostelecomCommunication solution provider Alcatel-Lucent has been selected by Russian cable television operator JSC Mostelecom to deploy a new IP-based network that will enable the operator to introduce triple play and business services across the city of Moscow and extend its subscriber reach. The project will be implemented in several stages with the first phase scheduled for launch in the first quarter 2007.
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Twofour Convergent and Mobile TV, part of the Twofour Group, has revealed its latest convergent television deal with AOL in the UK.
Twofour has produced 100 how-to guides and instructional videos for AOL's 'Show Me', the award winning, self-help guides which can be watched for free at the AOL portal.
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Monday 5th February
Viacom demands YouTube takes down content
Comcast subs and profits up
UK politicians slam EU regs
IPTV slow burn across Asia
Disney: DTOs don’t kill DVDs
Spain: ONO leads the pay-TV ratings
iPhone court battle on hold
Emap buys YoSpace
Kamera web-TV contract with 37 newspapers
Kasenna supports Russian IPTV
Viacom demands YouTube takes down content
Viacom, owner of MTV, Comedy Central and Nikolodeon, has told YouTube to remove more than 100,000 items of its copyright material immediately.
The demand comes as the two sides negotiations over rights clearance and payments, negotiations that seemed set to offer Viacom a stake in YouTube, have broken down.
Viacom is one of several media companies, along with Fox, CBS and NBC Universal, that has also been discussing building their own sharing site to compete with YouTube.
YouTube has signed licensing deals with CBS and NBC, but has failed with other large media companies. Last week News Corp.'s Fox sued YouTube demanding it unveil the identity of a user who uploaded pirated copies of recent episodes of '24' and 'The Simpsons'.
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Comcast, America’s biggest cable operator, revealed a further sharp increase in subscribers and profits in the fourth quarter. It says rapid roll out of triple play has resulted in more subscribers across the board and higher profitability. "I think it may have been our best year ever," said Brian Roberts, chairman and chief executive, "triple play is the driver."
Comcast added 110,000 basic subscribers in the fourth quarter of last year, its strongest growth in 10 years. The total of 24.2m exceeded many analysts’ expectations. It added 488,000 high-speed internet subscribers, and 508,000 new telephone customers in the quarter. Net profit in the fourth quarter rose to $390m up from $133m. Revenue was up 30 per cent to just over $7bn.
The shares are 55 per cent from a year ago (or declined slightly as the results included $1bn extra capex), as investors put aside concerns about a price war with telecom rivals.
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A report published by the House of Lords European Union Committee has heavily criticised the Commission's proposed Audiovisual Media Services Directive for introducing 'burdensome and inappropriate' regulation that could damage British industry.
They say the EU's proposals would mean internet and broadband TV services coming under the same European regulatory framework as traditional broadcasting. The Committee suggest it would be preferable to liberalise the provisions on advertising for established broadcasters rather than seek to extend existing provisions to new media services.
They also point out that enforcement of the proposed Directive will be fraught with difficulties particularly as the definition of the services covered may not offer sufficient legal certainty. The Committee was particularly concerned that the EU's proposals could force new media broadcasters to move their base of operations away from the EU.
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According to research firm IDC, IPTV subscribers in the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan, is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 89 per cent, from 1.2 million in 2005 to nearly 30 million by 2010. This growth, however, will not be uniform across all markets.
Claudio Checchia of IDC, told ZDNet said he doesn't see widespread adoption of IPTV across the Asia-Pacific region. For now, much of the IPTV activity will largely happen in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
China, in particular, holds immense potential as it has the largest broadband subscriber base in the Asia-Pacific region. Residential subscribers constitute about 70 per cent of China's 47.8 million broadband subscribers, according to latest figures.
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Downloads of Walt Disney films on the iTunes platform have risen sharply to more than 1.3m after three months on sale. Other studios have resisted its lead, partly because of fears that they will upset retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target, which are responsible for most DVD sales in the US.
Bob Iger, Disney’s chief executive, told FT digital distribution was "creating more consumption of media". He added: "The message that we deliver to our traditional retailers is that the pie is getting bigger." He dismissed fears that digital downloads would cannibalise DVD sales, pointing to record sales of Cars, a Disney animated movie, and of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, which is on course to be the biggest selling DVD ever.
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Spain: ONO leads the pay-TV ratings
From David Del Valle in SpainSpain's largest cable company ONO is leading the Spanish pay TV audience ratings in the country. In January, the company pulled in an average audience share of 6.37 per cent, followed by Digital Plus, with 4.23 per cent, and other pay-TV operators (like Imagenio) with 4.18 per cent.
In terms of the number of subscribers, ONO is in second place, with 950,000 subscribers, behind Digital Plus, with 2 million. Telefonica's IPTV service Imagenio is third with more than 350,000 clients.
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iPhone court battle on holdThe legal dispute between Apple and Cisco Systems over the iPhone name has been temporarily suspended. As expected the two firms have agreed to extend talks aimed at "reaching agreement on trademark rights and interoperability".
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Emap buys YoSpaceEmap, the UK magazine business, has paid £8.7m (E12.4m) for YoSpace, a technology firm specialising in user-generated content. Emap will pay a further £5.7m for YoSpace if it reaches certain performance targets.
YoSpace produces the See Me TV service for 3 and Look At Me TV for O2, both of which pay users for their mobile video content. The company also provides online and mobile software including photo and video sharing, photo editing and an emulation tool that mimics a mobile interface on websites, used to show consumers how to access services on their phones.
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Kamera web-TV contract with 37 newspapersMobile TV distributor Kamera has signed a web-TV deal with Swedish mktmedia, enabling 37 newspaper titles in the groups Stampen, VLT and Mittmedia to publish international news videos on their web-sites.
Kamera, which works in association with leading international news agency Associated Press, will deliver six clips per day, seven days a week, covering international news and entertainment. The videos will be published in the common web TV platform built by mktmedia.
IPTV vendor Kasenna is working with Business Computer Centre (BCC), a System Integrator based in St. Petersburg, Russia, to implement an IPTV solution for Russia's Southern Telecom Company (UTK).
UTK's IPTV solution, branded "DiSel TV", has initially been deployed in two cities around Krasnodar in southern Russia and the service already covers about 27 per cent of the proposed network, with 33 TV channels and several thousand subscribers. The IPTV service is now being extended to other cities.
