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Scroll down page or click below for news - latest first
Tuesday
Friday 1st December
Murdoch lashes regulators
PCCW minorities block sale
TiVo disappoints Wall St
Telenet buys UPC Belgium
UK pays less for media, comms
Foxtel slates 2007 for tech advances
Cisco, S-A power Noos 100 Mbps
Erenis optical fibre through Paris
MTV Italia launches Qoob multimedia platform
ANYTIME and Buena Vista VOD deal
1MP and Kamera mobile video in China
Salten Bredbånd deploy Latens
Murdoch lashes regulatorsBSkyB chief executive James Murdoch attacked UK regulators in the context of investigations into Sky’s £940m (E1.36bn) buy of 18% of ITV's shares. Speaking at an Ofcom event, Murdoch said regulation had, in the past, been an elitist and almost authoritarian force and, in the present, should only be used to protect consumers from actual harm. "There is the basic reduction in human freedom which always goes with regulation. There is the corrosion of enterprise, which always goes with bureaucracy," he said.
"If we get the philosophy of regulation right, we have a compass by which a regulator and the players in a markets can find true north in constantly shifting seas. Get it wrong and the way is opened for tiresome and dysfunctional meddling which can shipwreck the regulatory process itself not to mention business and their customers across the board."Ofcom has invited ITV and BSkyB submissions on whether BSkyB's stake in the broadcaster marked a "change in control" that might affect ITV's programming. It said the probe would take six weeks.
Murdoch was particularly irritated by the way regulation of the UK media is a product of history. "We often think of broadcasting as a special case. The dead hand of history is to blame." He described BBC founder Lord Reith as having taken "a pretty firm view of the need to keep the lower classes in their place. So from the very start UK broadcasting regulation was skewed. Not to protect people against real harm, but to ensure that broadcasting was a sort of moral and educative crusade."
He added: "Since the 1990s, the consumer - not the powers that be - has increasingly and decisively taken charge."
Among other targets, Murdoch also attacked the BBC's "fantasy" of creating a British alternative to Google as "this is not public service, it's megalomania. Delusions of grandeur will flourish in the absence of proper accountability."
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PCCW minorities block saleThe future of PCCW is uncertain as minority shareholders voted to block the $1.2bn sale of a controlling stake to a consortium lead by Hong Kong banker Francis Leung but with financing from Li Ka-shing, father of PCCW chairman and majority stockholder Richard Li who was barred from voting because of his father’s involvement.
Li junior had planned to sell out to private equity but this was blocked by minority holder China Netcom with the Leung consortium orchestrated an owner China could approve. But minority holders believe the price offered is much too low. The rejection ruins months of delicate financial engineering by some of Asia’s most powerful businessmen and bankers, and raises questions over what Richard Li will do next with PCCW. Last week he was quoted in a Hong Kong newspaper as saying he was "unsatisfied" with his father’s involvement – which negated his ability to vote and increased completion risk – and would be "happy" if PCRD shareholders rejected it.
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TiVo disappoints Wall StShares of the digital video recorder company are up 23 per cent this year. But the stock has fallen about 34 percent since hitting a 52-week high in April. And the roller coaster continued as TiVo reported mixed results for its third quarter.
Service and technology revenue increased 22 per cent to $52.6 million. But that was below the $54.7 million analysts were expecting. In addition, TiVo warned that service and technology sales in the fourth quarter would be about $54 million to $55 million, lower than Wall Street's estimates of $61.2 million. Shares of TiVo fell about 3 per cent following the earnings release. TiVo said it had a net loss of $11.1 million for the quarter ended October 31. That compares with a net loss of $14.2 million in the same quarter last year.
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Belgian cable operator Telenet has agreed to buy its peer UPC from Liberty Global for E187 million. Telenet, the largest broadband cable service provider in Belgium, plans to close the transaction by the end of the year. UPC has 125,000 subscribers in Belgium. Liberty Global is in turn, the largest shareholder of Telenet with roughly 28 per cent.
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UK pays less for media, commsIn an exception to the norm, Britons usually pay less for mobile, broadband and television services than many Europeans and Americans, Ofcom research suggests.
The study found that a typical "high-use" home in the UK with pay-television, two mobile phone contracts and a high-speed broadband connection is charged £188 (E272) per month. That compares to £203 in France, £242 in Germany and £247 in America. The typical "lightest use" household — with, for example, just a fixed-line phone and free-to-air television — also fared best in the UK, paying just £28 a month compared with £31 in France, £33 in Germany, and £34 in Italy and the US.
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Foxtel slates 2007 for tech advances
From Rose Major in Melbourne
Pay-TV platform Foxtel, Australia’s largest subscription service, will test or launch a number of new projects from early 2007, many focused around its iQ hard-disk recorder.
Chief among these is Foxtel On-Demand, to launch in February. A limited on-demand service, Foxtel will upload 12 episodes on to subscribers’ iQ recorders which they can then watch at any time over the following seven days. The service will use up 60gb of space on the hard drive.
A download to broadband service will also trial in the first half of 2007 to 200 subscribers and Foxtel employees.
Remote recording, allowing iQ users to tell their recorders what to record via the Internet will start in January and from mobile phones in March. High-definition broadcasting is also on the cards, but has been slated for the latter months of next year.
Foxtel had 1.13 million subscribers at the end of June 2006, of which just 15,000 remain on the analogue platform. Since that date, subscribers have risen another 10 per cent, representing one of the platform’s strongest growth periods.
Analogue services are set to end in January, two months ahead of schedule.
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Cisco, S-A power Noos 100 Mbps
From Colin Mann in ParisThe first major fruits of Cisco’s take-over of Scientific-Atlanta have been made evident with the announcement that France’s leading cable operator Numericable is to offer ultra-high-speed broadband services to more than nine million households in France by the end of 2007. Numericable has started a nationwide update of its network, based on the Cisco IP Next-Generation Network, with the commercial launch set for December 4.
Numericable is to deploy fibre to customers’ premises nationwide and is increasing throughput of its existing network using Cisco’s uBR10012 cable modem termination systems, and high density xDQA24 edge QAMs, as well as EPC2505 wideband cable modems from Scientific Atlanta. The initial order for S-A modems amounts to 30,000 units.
"This moves France into the top tier of high-speed Internet nations," claimed Pascale Romano, Commercial Director, Service Provider at Numericable. Philippe Besnier, president of Numericable, remarked that cable was now a player at a national level. Noos-Numericable was born out of a range of acquisitions by finance houses Altice and Cinven, most recently with the July 2006 acquisition of Noos-UPC by the pair’s Ypso investment vehicle. The network reaches 9.1 million French households, some 40 per cent of those available.
Numericable is pursuing an aggressive, national roll-out strategy, enabling 10,000 households per day. Cities set to benefit immediately from the 100 Mbps service include Paris, Nancy, Mulhouse, Lyon, Nimes, Marseille, Bordeaux and Nantes. Jean-Christophe Dessange, broadband entertainment development manager for Cisco described the roll-out as "more than a three-man job," adding that it was the first such end-to-end project for the combined S-A/Cisco operation.
The launch price is E29.90 (with an E10 supplement for existing 30 Mbps customers over their current tariff), with the modem available at E149.
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Erenis optical fibre through Paris
From Sotires Eleftheriou in ParisThe optical fibre broadband provider Erenis is set to launch a commercial service with a download speed of 100 Mb/s in January 2007, with triple play, 100 GB of user storage, unlimited telephone calls to landlines in 100 countries and a bouquet of 54 TV channels. Erenis is currently cabling Paris with optical fibre.
The technology used is FTTB (fibre to the building), with VDSL within the building. To date, 1,500 buildings in Paris, reaching 50,000 apartments, have been connected to the Erenis network. It has 9,000 subscribers, expecting to reach 10,000 by the end of the year. It plans to start installing fibre in the suburbs next year and in the provinces from 2008, with the aim of having 300,000 clients by 2011.
Meanwhile, France Telecom is operating its own pilot fibre project. Free (Iliad group) has announced a massive fibre investment plan over ten years. Cable operator UPC-Noos-Numericable is also set to announce a similar offer.
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MTV Italia launches Qoob multimedia platform
From Branislav Pekic in RomeMTV Italia has launched Qoob, a multimedia platform offering an IPTV service, a DTT channel and a DVB-H mobile TV channel. Registered users can upload their photos and audio/video material (but not content "taken" from the TV) to the Qoob website.
Through the website, the public will be able to watch the material on various thematic channels (animation, fun, reality, shorts, music, art), while the DTT TV channel will transmit "the best of" the Internet material.Qoob TV currently offers 9,000 hours of content. Of the total, only 500 are produced by Qoob TV, with the remainder "user-generated". According to Antonio Campo Dall'Orto, director general of Telecom Italia Media Broadcasting, the first goal is to reach one million unique users in order to attract more advertising - a promotional campaign to aid the cause is scheduled for mid-January 2007.
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ANYTIME and Buena Vista VOD deal
Buena Vista International Television-Asia Pacific, the international television distribution arm of Disney, has concluded a multi-year movie video-on-demand IPTV agreement with Asia Pacific’s leading Video on-Demand Channel ANYTIME.
This agreement will make available a range of current and library features on the ANYTIME channel in Australia through TransACT and Regional Internet Australia (RIA), Buddy Broadband in Thailand and TDMC in Taiwan. The agreement also includes important provisions for cooperation against piracy of BVITV’s content, while at the same time safeguarding the privacy of end users and remaining consistent with local law and industry practice.
1MP and Kamera mobile video in China
Mobile users in China are now able to access content from Kamera’s two mobile channels: the celebrity-driven online entertainment service WOW! TV and the sports service SportCall. Both clip services, providing a compelling mix of local and international news, will be available in Mandarin.
Henrik Eklund, CEO of Kamera said: ‘With the introduction of high-speed networks, such as GPRS, EGDE, 3G and mobile broadcast, I think we are going to see an increased demand for rich media content in China.’ In July 2006, the number of mobile users in China toped 430 million, making it the largest mobile market in the world.
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Salten Bredbånd deploy LatensLatens is to provide Content & Revenue Security to Salten Bredbånd, the Norwegian IPTV operator. It will protect the Salten Bredbånd IPTV service, which presently includes 35 IPTV channels and Video on Demand and Program on Demand content services.
Latens will integrate its FCAS system with Salten Bredbånd’s existing IPTV system, which includes Kreatel set-top-boxes and a Tandberg Television IPTV headend. Upon deployment, FCAS will secure Salten Bredbånd’s pay-TV and Video On Demand services, which are currenty received by around 3,000 consumers.
Thursday 30th November
Wal-Mart to enter DTO market
BitTorrent signs multiple studios
Comcast offers wireless service
Comcast CFO from private equity
Digital downloading boost to music market
TiVo: more ad avails
Orca deploys IPTV service in Portugal
SPEED, FOX Sports Sign F1
Wal-Mart to enter DTO marketWal-Mart, the US’s largest seller of DVDs, has announced that it will begin a video download service in 2007. Wal-Mart did not reveal its partners, but US reports said that all the major studios are either on board or in active talks with the retailer, and that Hewlett-Packard is providing the technology for the download site.
Wal-Mart are testing the waters already: customers who buy the DVD of Warner Brothers’ "Superman Returns" in a Wal-Mart store have the option of downloading a digital copy of the film to their portable devices for $1.97, personal computer for $2.97, or both for $3.97.
Recently there has been tension between the studios and major US supermarkets who often price DVDs below cost as discounted DVDs are seen as a major driver of customer traffic.
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BitTorrent signs multiple studiosBitTorrent, the once uber pirate film download network, is planning distribution deals with eight media partners, including 20th Century Fox, Paramount and MTV Networks.
Scheduled for February 2007, BitTorrent will begin selling TV shows and movies from their media partners as protected files through its web site. No pricing details have yet been announced. BitTorrent’s software currently sits on an estimated 80 million computers, and Internet service providers say that file trading on the service has sometimes accounted for 40 per cent of all online traffic. The media companies in the BitTorrent deal say that the Internet firm has pledged to police its network for illegal trading.
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Comcast offers wireless service
Comcast has become the first U.S. cable operator to take on telco providers in the cell phone market, having begun marketing the service to consumers in Boston.
The largest U.S. cable television operator launched the service in Boston and Portland earlier this month after a year-long trial. Comcast is offering wireless as an add-on for subscribers of its "triple play" package of cable TV, telephone and Internet services.
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Comcast CFO from private equity
Comcast has hired a senior private equity executive, Michael Angelakis from Providence Equity Partners, to become its new chief financial officer. Angelakis is expected to join Comcast at the end of first quarter of next year as co-chief financial officer and to become CFO in 2008, when the current co-CFOs Lawrence Smith and John Alchin retire. Angelakis joined Providence in 1999. Before that, he was president of State Cable TV Corp and Aurora Telecommunications.
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Digital downloading boost to music marketA report by UK retail analysts Verdict Research, has revealed that following two years of declining sales, the music video retail market is set for a boost as increasingly tech-savvy consumers start to adopt digital downloading and as price deflation starts to ease. Though, at present, legal digital downloading remains a relatively small market at £112m (E162m), the report forecasts spending will swell to almost £0.5bn by 2011.
"The increasing availability of high speed Internet access is encouraging more consumers to experiment, downloading songs to their MP3 players. Looking ahead, as well as continued growth of music downloads, Verdict forecasts significant growth in video downloading." commented Alastair Lockhart, Senior Retail Analyst.
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TiVo: more ad availsTiVo has unveiled its latest attempt to catch eyeballs for advertisers. The new service, called Program Placement, enables the insertion of advertisements after a programme has played when there is nothing left to fast-forward through. The company said for the first time, advertisers will be able to reach their target audience by purchasing "ad enhancements" against specific shows.
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Orca deploys IPTV service in Portugal
Orca Interactive has confirmed that its IPTV middleware RiGHTv has been deployed for the first IPTV service in Portugal by telecommunications provider Clix.Aided by RiGHTv, Clix SmarTV will offer live broadcast television and radio channels, an electronic programming guide (EPG), video on demand (VOD) and subscription video on demand (SVOD). The service has been successfully deployed in the cities of Lisbon and Porto. All major cities in Portugal will be covered in the full commercial deployment that is expected to reach a large subscriber base in 2007.
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SPEED, FOX Sports Sign F1FOX outfit SPEED is teaming with big brother FOX Sports on a multi-year deal with F1 to provide complete coverage of the FIA F1 World Championship racing through 2009, with FOX broadcasting four events each season, including live coverage of the U.S. Grand Prix and Canadian Grand Prix. SPEED will air the remaining 13 events live, including the famed Grand Prix of Monaco.
In 2007, FOX will provide live coverage of the U.S. Grand Prix and Canadian Grand Prix, plus taped coverage of the British Grand Prix and French Grand Prix. SPEED will provide live coverage of qualifying and practice for the entire season.
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Wednesday 29th November
BBC Grade in shock ITV switch
Alcatel demonstrates Europe’s first live Mobile TV in S-band
YouTube on Verizon mobile phones
AT&T U-verse TV to Include NBC Universal Content
TVI starts DVB-H broadcasts and chases Euro 2008 rights
Advertising to benefit as consumers demand free downloads
Telefónica defies ministry
Government policy spawning STB boom in China
Successful ‘Me on TV’ launch
User-generated TV channel launches
Maxis adds 11 mobile TV channels
Red Bee Selects Tandberg for on-demand
ONO: losses down, subs up
Pay-DTT for Neotion
BBC’s Grade in shock ITV switch
From Colin Mann in LondonIn a move that astounded the UK broadcasting industry and "disappointed" the BBC, Michael Grade has resigned as Chairman of the BBC with immediate effect to become Executive Chairman of ITV. Grade had been intended to head the independent BBC Trust that was to replace the Board of Governors from January and oversee the BBC.
ITV has been seeking to appoint a Chief Executive since Charles Allen announced in July that he would be stepping down from the post in the autumn. Weekend press speculation had suggested that Stephen Carter, who stood down as Ofcom CEO in the summer, would be named imminently. The ITV Board had reportedly suspended the recruitment process in the middle of November following the merger approach by cable telco NTL, but the purchase of a 17.9 per cent stake in the broadcaster by BSkyB, and subsequent rejection of the NTL offer appear to have cleared the way for the Grade appointment.
Grade will join the ITV Board in early 2007, succeeding Sir Peter Burt, and will become Executive Chairman with responsibility for the business of the Company from that date. John Cresswell, the interim Chief Executive Officer, will become Chief Operating Officer and Finance Director. It is the Board’s intention that this arrangement should remain in place for up to three years. Within that time, Michael Grade and the Board expect to appoint a Chief Executive with Michael Grade stepping back from day-to-day management, to become Non-Executive Chairman.
BBC Vice-Chairman Anthony Salz becomes Acting Chairman of the BBC with immediate effect and remains in that post until the Board of Governors is dissolved at midnight on 31 December 2006. Appointment of a permanent replacement for Grade falls to the UK’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
Grade described his move as "a career decision," being faced with the choice of getting back into programming or ‘governing’ the BBC from a distance. Appointed to the BBC chairmanship in May 2004, in the wake of the Hutton Report into journalistic standards at the BBC, Grade secured a new ten year Charter and reformed the governance of the Corporation, but leaves with the licence fee settlement, which is due to come into effect in 2007, still not negotiated.
Grade said his first priority at ITV would be to support the team in accelerating the improvement in programming performance for its viewers and advertisers. "This is the best way to enhance the value of the Company for our shareholders," he added.
The ITV appointment marks Grade’s return to the commercial sector – where his late uncle, Lord Grade, was one of the founding fathers in 1955. In 1973, Grade became an executive at London Weekend Television and in 1981 he went to Hollywood as President of Embassy Television. He returned to Britain in 1984 as Controller of BBC One, and in 1986 became Director of Programmes, then Managing Director, Television (Designate). In 1988 he went to Channel 4 as Chief Executive and remained in that post until 1997.
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Alcatel demonstrates Europe’s first live Mobile TV in S-band
Alcatel has announced the successful demonstration of Europe's first broadcast of live TV channels on mobile handsets in S-band. The demonstration took place in Alcatel's UK premises. It is using the new DVB-SH standard (Satellite services for Handhelds), which is currently being drafted by the DVB Project. To perform this demonstration, Alcatel was assisted by UK broadcasters Sky, ITV and BBC.
Representatives from European mobile operators, TV broadcasters, industry analyst firms and regulatory bodies were able to see content received on SAGEM myMobileTV handsets. These terminals are using the S-band telecom frequency between 2.17GHz and 2.20GHz, which is adjacent to the 3G/UMTS band. 30MHz of spectrum is currently available all across Europe and in other major regions in the world.
DVB-SH is a new technology targeting the S-band. DVB-SH is a related standard to DVB-H. With DVB-SH technology, Mobile TV signals can be broadcast from satellites as well as from terrestrial transmitters directly to handhelds. DVB-SH handhelds can be designed in such a way that they become compatible with DVB-H so that both standards can be received in one end-user terminal.
In addition, Alcatel demonstrated two possible key technical features using the DVB-SH standard. Reception Antenna Diversity, a feature using two antennas inside the same mobile device, enables improvements in the signal quality under difficult conditions. Furthermore, improved Time Interleaving overcomes fading impairment in mobility conditions. The significant quality enhancement was demonstrated by implementing these DVB-SH features.
Ulrich Reimers, Chairman of the Technical Module of DVB Project, said that DVB-SH was "a perfect complement to other standards, such as DVB-H, which is typically using UHF frequencies but is capable of using the L-band. Thus DVB-SH may have a significant impact on the global Mobile TV industry."
Olivier Coste, President of Alcatel's mobile broadcast activities concluded: "Quality of Service is essential for operators to attract and retain Mobile TV users. Today, we demonstrated that high quality live Mobile TV using the S-band works. This can be up and running commercially very soon. With the additional benefits of universal indoor and countrywide coverage, the fundamentals of our solution are already solid enough to enable operators to profit from sustainable Mobile TV market growth thanks to the S-band."
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YouTube on Verizon mobile phonesYouTube has cut a deal with Verizon Wireless to broadcast its videos on VZW subscribers’ phones: customers who use Verizon Wireless’ V Cast video and music service will be able to access some of YouTube’s videos from their mobile phones.
The deal marks the mobile phone debut of YouTube, the video-sharing service owned by Google. Verizon Wireless and YouTube said the service would be available early December. The companies would not discuss the financial terms of their deal but said Verizon would have the exclusive rights to distribute YouTube videos on mobile phones "for a limited period of time."
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AT&T U-verse TV to Include NBC Universal ContentAT&T and NBC Universal have confirmed a distribution agreement to deliver NBC Universal linear, high-definition (HD) and on-demand programming as part of the AT&T U-verse TV channel line-up.
Under the agreement, AT&T will distribute to U-verse customers the analogue and digital signals of the NBC and Telemundo owned-and-operated broadcast stations, as well as NBCU’s cable properties, including CNBC, CNBC World, MSNBC, Telemundo, mun2, Telemundo Puerto Rico, USA Network, Universal HD and the Olympics on Cable. The deal also includes video-on-demand rights for Universal Pictures’ movies.
AT&T U-verse TV is delivered by Project Lightspeed, the telco's initiative to expand the fibre-optics network deeper into neighbourhoods to deliver U-verse TV, AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet U-verse Enabled and, in the future, Voice over IP services. Through its subsidiaries, AT&T expects to reach nearly 19 million households by the end of 2008 as part of its initial deployment, using fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) and fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) technologies.
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TVI starts DVB-H broadcasts and chases Euro 2008 rights
From Branislav Pekic in RomePortuguese commercial broadcaster TVI has teamed with mobile operator Vodafone Portugal to launch trial digital television broadcasts to mobile phones using DVB-H technology.
The project permits the reception of channels in DVB-H in the Greater Lisbon area and is supported by Portugal’s sole private television transmission network - Media Capital’s RETI. The mobile digital TV (DVB-H) licences will be awarded only after the completion of the tendering process.
Meanwhile, TVI is reported to have secured the exclusive Portuguese TV rights for the 2008 European Football Championships in Austria and Switzerland. According to Correio da Manhã, the broadcaster signed the contract two months ago with Sportfive – UEFA’s sales agent for the TV rights to the football tournament – but has still not publicly announced the news for contractual reasons.
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Advertising to benefit as consumers demand free downloadsConsumers want their video downloads to replicate the advertising funded model of TV. 55 per cent of those questioned would prefer to watch advertising and get the content for free rather than pay for content without advertising, new research from ICM, commissioned by BiBC (British Interactive Broadcasting Company), has revealed.
74 per cent of the 18-24 year old market said that they’d prefer the advertising funded model. The group with the highest likelihood to choose to pay to download to avoid advertising was the 35-44 year group, but still this only accounted for 34 per cent of the sample.
In previous research BiBC found that 35 per cent of people were discouraged from buying content via downloading because they felt that it was no cheaper than buying hard copy.
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Telefónica defies ministry
The Brazilian fixed line unit of Spanish telecoms group Telefónica has launched its pay TV service in São Paulo defying instructions from communications minister Hélio Costa to wait for approval.
Costa warned Telefónica that it was not authorised to offer satellite TV services until the Government established rules for the pay TV segment that would not be ready for another 60 days.Telefónica, in partnership with satellite service provider DTH Interactive, has launched the pay TV services in the city of Ribeirão Preto. The service will be expanded to other cities in the coming weeks.
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Government policy spawning STB boom in China
The deployment of Whole System Shift, a Government effort to speed up the conversion of urban households from analogue to digital cable TV, is driving China’s digital cable set-top box (STB) market, reports In-Stat.. Unit shipments of digital cable STBs are projected to quadruple, from 3 million in 2005 to 12 million in 2010, the market research firm reports.
"Most of the digital STB shipment increases will come from basic set-top boxes," says Rebecca Tan, In-Stat analyst. "Most cable operators that are now installing Whole System Shift provide only basic services, and networks have not yet begun to install two-way networks. Operators’ ability to provide interactive services is limited in the short-term, therefore, operators prefer basic boxes."
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Successful ‘Me on TV’ launch
‘Me on TV’ saw its premiere on television during the live final of Big Brother in the Netherlands. The ‘Me on TV’ service turns every mobile phone into a TV camera which can broadcast live on TV, Internet and mobile. Users are able to send live news to a programme or website.According to Edwin Tromp, Manager Talpa Digital Media, "there are many more possibilities to use Me on TV of which we will be showing more in the near future." ‘Me on TV’ is a co-operation between Ericsson, Triple IT and Endemol Nederland.
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User-generated TV channel launchesSumo.tv, a dedicated UGC TV channel claims to be the world’s first user-content TV channel and will run on Sky channel 146, offering a 24-hour mix of new submissions and classic cult content.
The programming is supplied by its target audience of 18- to 35-year-olds, with much of it based around a combination of Jackass-style stunts and painful mishaps.
The TV channel extends the existing Sumo.tv website and mobile service and the platforms complement each other, so users can send content from their mobile to their profile on the website from where content is selected to appear on TV.
According to the creators, entertainment technology and content firm Cellcast, viewers will receive around a 20 per cent share of revenues if their footage is downloaded, viewed online or broadcast; something that they feel will encourage individuals to create their own ‘mini-brands’.
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Maxis adds 11 mobile TV channelsMalaysian cellular carrier Maxis Communications has added 11 more channels to its mobile television service, Maxis TV, and the new feature ‘Easy Switch’ that simplifies channel switching.
Maxis TV now has 20 channels, including a sports package of channels dedicated to Arsenal FC, Liverpool FC, FC Barcelona and the European Professional Golf Association tour, as well as music-video, fashion, lifestyle and news channels.
Easy Switch allows channel surfing at the touch of a button, rather than requiring that the user go through the wireless application protocol (WAP) to select a new channel.
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Red Bee Selects Tandberg for on-demand
Tandberg Television has revealed that Red Bee Media has selected the Tandberg Xport Digital Media Solutions software to enable next-generation on-demand entertainment services.
At its broadcast centre in West London, Red Bee Media is installing two Tandberg Xport Producer workstations that provide encoding, editing and metadata management tools. They are claimed to be the first in the world to support both high definition (HD) and standard definition (SD) MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC ingest and editing.
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ONO: losses down, subs up
From David del Valle in MadridSpain’s largest cable company, ONO, is still in the red but increasingly reducing its losses. Until September, the company declared a E37 million loss, 3.3 per cent less than the same period last year.
EBITDA grew by 130.7 per cent up to E417 million, nearly the same amount reached in the whole 2005 year. Turnover raised by 183 per cent up to E1.24 billion (of which 68 per cent corresponds to residential and 29 per cent to business) which the company ascribes to the merger with Auna, with the integration process now completed.
Up to September 2006, ONO attracted 91,000 new subscribers, reaching 1.75 million, up 5.5 per cent, of which 1.53 million relate to telephony (up 5.5 per cent), 986,000 broadband subscribers (20.4 per cent more) and 914,000 TV subscribers (9.7 per cent more). The number of passed homes grew by 346,000 in the last quarter, reaching nearly 6 million across the country.
In October, the company passed the million broadband clients mark, representing 23 per cent of all broadband Internet connections in Spain.
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Digital TV technology specialist Neotion is launching the Neotion Pocket MPEG-4, designed to enable French digital terrestrial television viewers easily to receive a bouquet of family channels for less than E10.
Neotion has been authorised as a DTT distributor by regulator the CSA (Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel). With this alternative offer, Neotion plans to become a major player in pay-DTT by addressing a market for an easily accessible, low cost bouquet, with a potential 1.5 million households.
The Neotion Pocket is the first MPEG-4 decoder in credit card format, which can adapt directly into 100 per cent of integrated DTT sets now widespread in France.
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Tuesday 28th November
BT Vision: December 4
NTL contest BskyB’s ITV bid
Online video sees decline in TV
Spain DTT fails on interactivity
StarHub wins rights for Premier League
BSNL’s Triple Play broadband
BT Vision: December 4
BT has said it will launch its broadband television service, BT Vision, on December 4. The company said there would be a ‘measured roll-out’ of the new service that would pick up momentum in the spring.
BT Vision will combine a Freeview digital TV receiver with video on demand and catch-up viewing of recent programmes delivered over broadband. Full details on pricing for the service will be unveiled at launch.
NTL contest BskyB’s ITV bid
NTL will make its submission to regulator Ofcom this week, contesting BSkyB's recent £940m (E1.36bn) purchase of 17.9 per cent of ITV's shares. It is also likely to make a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading contending that BSkyB could exert a major influence over ITV and affect the level of competition in the UK TV market.
NTL - which will rebrand as Virgin Media next year - hopes Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading will find fault with BSkyB's stake-building. Ofcom last week formally invited ITV and BSkyB for their opinions as to whether BSkyB's acquisition marked a "change in control" that might affect ITV's programming and said its inquiry would take six weeks. It is not yet known whether NTL will come back with a higher offer.
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Online video sees decline in TV
The online video boom is starting to eat into TV viewing time according to a BBC survey. Approximately 43 per cent of Britons who watch video from the Internet or on a mobile device at least once a week said they watched less normal TV as a result. And online and mobile viewing is rising - three quarters of users said they now watched more than they did a year ago.
But online video viewers are still in the minority, with just 9 per cent of the population saying they do it regularly. Two-thirds of the population said they did not watch online and could not envisage starting in the next 12 months.
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Spain DTT fails on interactivity
From David Del Valle in Madrid
The proliferation of cheap set-top-boxes (with prices between E30 and 75) unable to receive MHP-based services, is hindering the development of interactivity in Spain through DTT.
Experts are pessimistic about how the DTT market is evolving; Juan Jose Gutierrez, in charge of interactivity at RTVE Digital, regrets "most people cannot have access to these (interactive) services as they have a basic STB". He estimates that less than 10 per cent of those with a DTT box (so far, 3 million boxes have been sold,) are able to receive MHP-based services.
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StarHub wins rights for Premier League
Singapore cable opeator StarHub has won exclusive rights for the next three seasons of the Barclays English Premier League, commencing from the 2007/2008 season, for the Singapore market. The Premier League will give StarHub exclusive broadcast rights to as many as 380 matches on all three of its platforms – cable TV, mobile and online.
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BSNL’s Triple Play broadband
Indian telco Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has soft-launched its Triple-Play broadband service of voice, data and video in Pune. With the launch of the new service, BSNL is hoping to target 1.5 million customers in the next five years.
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Monday 27th November
Siemens will stay in China IPTV?
Broadband growth slows in Europe’s big markets
Universal and Reeltime download service
Italy to tender 40% of DTT multiplex capacity
Arcep to sell fourth UMTS licence next year
Consumers tempted by bundled services
CLP TV starts trials
Flextech will be Virgin TV
MyTVPal.com - HD IPTV Service
Star One and Star Gold on BSkyB
Siemens will stay in China IPTV?
Siemens has said it is still confident about its place in China's emerging IPTV market amid reports the company will withdraw from the market. "We are quite confident in our IPTV business in China," Siemens spokesperson Wang Chuandong told Interfax.Wang denied reports of Siemens IPTV team being dismissed. Shanghai Telecom, a subsidiary of China Telecom, gave a contract to Siemens in 2005 to supply IPTV solutions for its trial service in the Pudong New Area of Shanghai. However, the carrier gave the IPTV contracts to UTStarcom and ZTE for its commercial IPTV service across the entire Shanghai city launched in September, in a bid joined by Alcatel Shanghai Bell, Siemens, Huawei and Microsoft.
Broadband growth slows in Europe’s big markets
As Western European telecoms operators announce their Q3 results, a continuing trend of slowing growth in the largest broadband markets in the region. The study by Screen Digest, comprising telcos in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, quarterly growth was 5 per cent – down on the previous quarter and a substantial decrease from the 11 per cent growth seen in Q3 2005. A review of growth from Q2 to Q3 on a country-by-country basis revealed disparities between the markets; the UK had the highest growth that, at over 7 per cent, was more than double that of the French market.
The slowdown significantly affected a number of the incumbent telcos in the Big 5 European territories, several of which suffered from market saturation. Additionally, increased competition from smaller ISPs has had a detrimental effect on the number of new customers gained by some of the incumbents. Notable exceptions were Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica which managed to increase their respective domestic market shares.
Back to topUniversal and Reeltime download service
Universal Pictures Australasia and ReelTime Media are to launch a major movie download-to-own (DTO) service in the international market. The deal marks the first major movie DTO service in Australia and New Zealand.
Consumers with high-speed broadband connection will be able to download a selection of Universal movies and content for permanent ownership via a unique 3-copy secure burn DTO model. Users can access two Windows Media files, downloadable to PC/laptop and a portable device (compatible with Windows Play4Sure technology) and a third digital file that allows the movie to be securely and legitimately burned to DVD, containing full DVD functionality.
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Italy to tender 40% of DTT multiplex capacity
From Branislav Pekic in Rome
Italy’s Communications watchdog (AGCOM), headed by Corrado Calabro, has given the go-ahead to new regulations that will see 40 per cent of the digital multiplex capacity of national broadcasters RAI, Mediaset and Telecom Italia Media, put up for auction.
According to AGCOM, the move is intended to favour pluralism and to speed up the passage to digital terrestrial starting from the so-called all digital regions (Valle d’Aosta and Sardinia). The measures include the setting up of a Commission of Experts, to be appointed by the watchdog and the Communications Ministry that will assign the channels to the independent publishers who will ask them. The list of digital TV operators will be approved by the Authority, with priority being given to "validate the quality of programmes" and "promoting access to the market of new operators".
The regulations are a result of requests made by the Italia Digitale Committee chaired by Minister Paolo Gentiloni. The implementation of the new procedures is expected to last several months.
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Arcep to sell fourth UMTS licence next yearFrench telecoms regulator Arcep plans to auction off a fourth UMTS mobile telecom licence in 2007 in a bid to introduce greater levels of competition in the local market. The watchdog has now closed its public consultation on the licence and says 21 companies participated, of which ‘several’ indicated ‘expressions of interest’ in the concession. One of these is the domestic ISP Iliad (Free) which told Arcep that it would be interested in buying the fourth and final UMTS licence. Iliad is already active in the fixed line voice and broadband internet access markets and is currently deploying a WiMAX network to consolidate its position.
The three existing 3G licences in France are held by Orange France, Bouygues Télécom and Société Française de Radiotéléphone (SFR), owned by Vivendi and Vodafone. They paid E619 million for their licences, and the same price would be paid by the new market entrant.
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Consumers tempted by bundled services
The race is on to sign up consumers to "bundled entertainment and communications services", with brands such as BT, Sky, MSN and Carphone Warehouse encroaching on each other’s traditional territories whilst vying for customers to stay loyal, according to Continental Research’s Autumn 2006 Convergence Report.
James Myring, associate director at Continental Research, said: "TV companies are moving into telecoms services and fixed and mobile operators are moving into entertainment and broadband. Some are doing this organically, others by acquisition. What were previously distinct market sectors are merging into one, with all players trying to leverage new services from their existing customer base."
Continental says it will be difficult for companies to become credible in all convergent technologies. Brands like Sky, BT and Virgin that have a brand name with appeal beyond its traditional area of expertise are the companies that look best placed to succeed.
CLP TV starts trials
From Branislav Pekic RomePortuguese satellite TV channel O Canal de Língua Portuguesa (CLP TV), based in Paris, will initiate test broadcasts this week. CLP TV is to propose partnerships with three Portuguese terrestrial TV channels, and, in exchange, will grant technical, and logistical support to TV crews when in Paris. The channel will be run from the space previously occupied by TV5. The channel will employ 70 professionals and have 14 correspondents in the main European capitals as well as in the Americas and Africa.
The initial broadcast will consist of a generic presentation of the station, of approximately one hour, in a repeated form, to be extended to four hours of broadcasts in December. According to LP TV’s director, António Cardoso, the channel will be on the air for eight hours from Christmas, with 24 hour broadcasts launching in February, by when the transmissions will be extended to Africa.
CLP TV has the financial support of around 30 Portuguese businesses based in France. Seventy per cent of the programming will be transmitted in Portuguese, with foreign programmes subtitled in Portuguese.
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Flextech is to be rebranded Virgin TV when parent NTL takes on the Virgin Media name next year. NTL plans to offer a quad-play of broadband, fixed-line, mobile and pay-TV under the Virgin banner.
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MyTVPal.com - HD IPTV ServiceMyTVPal.com, the 1080P high definition streaming Video on Demand and IPTV service for PC Player and IPTV STBs, is set to launch.
To start the service will offer over 700 free IPTV channels from over 70 countries, including standard definition and high definition channels to any broadband user with 1.5Mb/s speed or higher. A wide range of video on demand titles will be offered for a low monthly cost in the months to come with new TV channels and VOD titles being added each month.
User uploaded content and DVR features will be available as a software upgrade for PC and STB clients in 2007.
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Star One and Star Gold on BSkyBStar Media is set to launch Star One and Star Gold on the Sky digital TV platform. Star One, launched in 2004 in India, offers viewers an array of popular Hindi entertainment programmes. Star Gold is one of India’s popular Bollywood movie channels. The launch expands STAR’s Indian channel offering on BSkyB from the current line-up of Star Plus and Star News to a total of four channels.
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