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Scroll down page or click below for news - latest first
Tuesday Friday 29th September
Europe risks losing mobile TV lead
COLT and Actelis' copper Ethernet boosts access speeds
Australian media players dig in for bill battle
YouTube - HDTV on the web?
Industry leaders join forces for mobilised gaming
VCom decoder successfully tested by US MSO
Pace to ship standard definition DVR to US
Buyout sees Swiftcall eye broadband market
KOD to aid IPTV business growth in Asia
Europe risks losing mobile TV leadAlthough Europe has a lead over other continents in developing mobile television, a lack of joint radio spectrum for the service may jeopardise that leadership, according to regulators and industry leaders.
"Presently Europe has a few months' leadership over its rivals," Jorma Ollila, chairman of handset maker Nokia, told an i2010 telecoms conference in Helsinki. "We need rapid deployment of mobile TV in Europe," he added. Nokia is a proponent of DVB-H technology (digital video broadcast - handheld) for watching television broadcasts on mobile phones.
The European Commission aims to use a specific part of radio spectrum known as ‘L band’ as a short term solution for joint frequency, but according to Fabio Colasanti, DG, Information Society, it will take at least a year to implement, and the solution will have to last until 2012, when analogue broadcasts are switched off and enough new radio spectrum becomes available to launch sufficient TV channels.
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COLT and Actelis' copper Ethernet boosts access speeds
Aided by business communications group COLT, Actelis Network's Ethernet over copper services have successfully been introduced in Belgium; the first phase in a program to boost local access speeds for businesses across Europe.
Leveraging existing copper lines, Actelis' EFMplus technology enables COLT to deliver cost-effective, advanced data and converged communications to more mid-size businesses at fiber-like speeds and resiliency."Demand for greater bandwidth is growing exponentially and the traditional limitations of copper have prevented many businesses from improving their communications and migrating to the next generation of services," said Dr Alireza Mahmoodshahi, Chief Technology Officer of COLT. "COLT is one of the first service providers to unlock this bottleneck using Actelis' EFMplus technology."
Actelis' technology delivers symmetrical Ethernet at speeds of up to 40 Mbps over multiple voice grade copper lines. This technology enables more businesses to access the speeds and features normally only available to those with fiber connections by using existing copper lines.
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Australian media players dig in for bill battle
From Rose Major in MelbourneA flurry of submissions to Australia’s Senate inquiry into the government’s media bill, which started today, have entrenched key players’ positions - including Seven Network’s contention that high-definition multichannelling is "multichannelling for the rich".
Seven is angry that free-to-air networks won’t be able to launch standard-definition multichannels on Australia’s DTT spectrum until 2009. "Delaying multichannelling until 2009 and limiting it to one channel would place organisations like Seven at a competitive disadvantage," Seven’s submission says. "HD multichannelling is multichannelling for the rich....This does not serve the interests of consumers or of competition in the media sector."
The broadcaster also calls for Foxtel to be excluded from bidding for one of the two DTT channels about to be auctioned by the government. "If a person in a position to control a commercial FTA cannot bid for a licence, a person in a position to control a subscription television licence should be similarly precluded." Seven can bid for just one of the two channels and cannot provide "in-home" services, while Foxtel could bid for both and its service could be "in-home".
For its part, Foxtel’s submission states its view that the media bill "continues to be dangerously and unfairly weighted in favour of commercial television" particularly in relation to digital television. Its submission says the networks "have accepted
the policy favours of gifted public spectrum at no charge to convert to digital" but had "returned the favour to the Australian public with a snail's-pace digital conversion".Foxtel’s submission asks that the free-to-air networks be banned from bidding for any of the available DTT spectrum, although their signal should be carried on any new services such as mobile TV.
But Ten Network’s submission picks up on what the company clearly views as an iniquitous suggestion from opposition players. "The suggestion that the free-to-air networks should be the only companies in the world precluded from bidding for spectrum to provide a new mobile service when a range of other dominant companies including Australia's largest telecommunications company, Telstra, and Australia's monopoly pay TV provider, Foxtel, can bid, is ludicrous," its submission says.
And while Seven supports the ABC’s call for listed sports events to be allowed on DTT multichannels, reported on Wednesday, Foxtel strongly opposes such a move. "The rationale of the anti-siphoning regime is to ensure all Australians can see major sporting events on free to air television," it points out.
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Intel CEO Paul Otellini has declared that the inevitable next step for YouTube will be to distribute content in high definition.
Otellini explained the need for faster processing. "A YouTube stream would have occupied the majority of a PC’s CPU time 5-10 years ago," he said. "Today, it is a very small amount, allowing users to do many other things simultaneously."
He added that this year would see the true mainstreaming of HD, with the first sub-$1000 HD camcorders.
Industry leaders join forces for mobilised gaming
Nokia, Samsung, SK Telecom, Square-Enix, Symbian, Tao Group, and Texas Instruments Unite have joined forces with the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) to further define and support an open gaming specification for premium-quality native games for mobile phones.
With more than a billion mobile phones in the marketplace today, this initiative will fuel the growth of mobile games for the masses by crafting an open approach for gaming development.
The OMA’s Game Services Working Group's aim to create an environment for reduced platform fragmentation, lowered development costs, and a richer mobile gaming experience for the consumer.
"Developing specifications under the OMA Game Services Working Group is a natural move that allows participating companies to rapidly develop the specifications needed to enable a richer, more consistent mobile gaming experience for consumers," said Kevin Mowry, chairman of the OMA Game Services Working Group.
VCom decoder successfully tested by US MSO
VCom Inc. reports that, after successful performance testing, another major multiple service operator in the United States has conditionally approved VCom’s CableVista edge decoder.
VCom has been cleared to ship the digital video product to operational sites in the United States pending final documentation relating to environmental testing, the company is confident it will receive full approval. Adelphia Communications and Cox Communications granted VCom approval of the same product in February of this year. Several mid-size middle service operators (MSOs) have also deployed CableVista to date.In addition to this, VCom have announced revenue increases of 27 per cent year over year.
Pace to ship standard definition DVR to US
Pace Micro Technology has received approval from Comcast to commence shipments of its standard-definition digital cable set-top box with digital video recording capabilities.
Pace will begin shipping its product, known as the Vegas TDC575 in the US market, to selected Comcast cable systems this month. The box supports electronic programme guides and video-on-demand applications.
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Buyout sees Swiftcall eye broadband market
Irish calls firm Swiftcall has been acquired as part of a management buyout led by its CEO Tommy Tuite and chief technology officer Fergus Kernan.
Swiftcall said it will shortly undergo a brand re-launch and plans to aggressively enter the broadband market later this year.Tuite and Kernan have been involved with the firm for over 11 years and have agreed a deal with KDDI where they will purchase 100pc of the firm.
Swiftcall will retain KDDI as an interconnect partner, along with others telcos such as Eircom, Verizon and Cable & Wireless.
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KOD to aid IPTV business growth in Asia
Streaming21 has announced its delivery of Asia's most popular entertainment, Karaoke On Demand (KOD), for Lung Hwa Electronics. This joint-developed KOD service will be the world's first KOD service that offers full-screen TV playback with unique "interactive" karaoke features over open networks. In contrast to other commercial KOD deployments around the world, which rely on expensive managed networks, Streaming21's solution works over the Internet and is available to subscribers from any domestic ISP.
i-Fun, a home entertainment service, currently offers more than 6 TV channels to 5,000 subscribers in Taiwan. The company plans to roll out a total of 10 channels and support up to 20,000 subscribers by year-end, offering service categories such as Entertainment, Karaoke, Cartoon, Lifestyle, Online Shopping, Online Stock Updates and E-learning. Karaoke On Demand will be the strategic application that keeps audiences captivated, and helps Lung Hwa to quickly expand its IPTV business in Asia Pacific.
Peter Pai, CEO of Lung Hwa Electronics said, "Streaming21 offers a highly reliable, easily customized, feature-rich and user-friendly KOD platform which enables us to provide appealing IPTV services to subscribers from any ISP. By adapting Streaming21's carrier-grade KOD solution, we can get to markets quickly with differentiated, profitable service offerings and achieve our strategic competitive goal in moving into the IPTV business.
Thursday 28th September
Microsoft to broadcast live music
SES ASTRA contracts UK’s Five for additional capacity
ISPs seek legal block to Telecom's broadband plans
Spain's Digital Plus breaks 2 million subs mark
TI strike deal with Sony Pictures
ANT Galio Client to Scientific Atlanta
Microsoft to broadcast live musicMicrosoft Corp.has signed an agreement to broadcast live-music events on the Internet with a music-broadcast producer, as part of its effort to increase the advertising on its MSN Web service.
Co-founder and chief executive of the project, Kevin Wall, announced that he had struck a new deal to produce live events to be distributed through Microsoft’s online service and, potentially, through products like Xbox. The venture with Microsoft will be called Control Room.
The first production will be a performance early next month by Grammy Award winner John Legend at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Live video from the concert will be broadcast free over Microsoft's MSN service.The agreement is part of a broader effort by Microsoft to attract more users and, in turn, advertisers to MSN. Over the past three years, Microsoft has invested heavily in new services designed to tap a rush of advertising that is fueling Google Inc. and other Web companies. Though MSN's efforts have increased the revenue Microsoft gets from online advertising, the company's ad revenue pales in comparison with rivals Google and Yahoo Inc.
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SES ASTRA contracts UK’s Five for additional capacity
SES ASTRA has signed a new transponder contract with the British commercial TV broadcaster Five. The additional capacity will primarily be used for the company’s two new channels Five Life and Five US which will be launched in October.
"With this additional agreement, we continue to consolidate our position as Europe’s leading direct-to-home satellite company in an extremely competitive environment", said Alexander Oudendijk, Chief Commercial Officer of SES ASTRA. "We are very pleased about our strong business relationship with Five and will continue to offer the best service possible to all our customers."
Chris Anning, CTO for Five, said:" To meet the challenges of the next few years and further increase our overall audience share we will be launching exciting new channels and this transponder deal will give us the capacity we need to expand."
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The company is owned by Europe’s largest broadcaster, the RTL Group, which operates 34 TV and 34 radio stations across Europe.
ISPs seek legal block to Telecom's broadband plans
The Internet Service Providers Association (ISAPNZ) is calling on the Commerce Commission to move swiftly to stop Telecom introducing its new broadband pricing regime, due to take effect from October 26, reports Computerworld.
ISAPNZ spokesman, Martin Wylie, says the Commerce Commission needs to stop Telecom before the plans are released into the market.
"We have asked the commission to intervene and to injunct Telecom if needs be." Wylie believes the new plans are so disruptive to the industry that they must be stopped before the public gets their hands on them.
The new Xtra plans have come under fire for pricing, which in some cases is below the wholesale price the ISPs must pay Telecom, for the lack of consultation and for the inequality in provisioning which sees Xtra customers treated differently to non-Xtra customers.
Xtra receives its bandwidth over Ethernet connections while the rest of the industry uses ATM – a far more costly solution.
Wylie says the problem goes beyond that, however,."Xtra customers are connected in days, while it takes weeks to connect ours. On top of that, Telecom has some kind of technical problem it cannot fix which causes micro-outages that drop our customers and forces them to re-authenticate to get back on the network." A number of customers have reported problems logging back on and Wylie says it’s possibly due to the sheer overwhelming number of customers trying at once.
Wylie says the problem only affects non-Xtra customers and that Telecom "doesn’t seem to be in any rush" to fix it. If that’s not an abuse of monopoly position, I don’t know what is."Conversely, Telecom's general manager of wholesale, Matt Crockett, says the company "is playing fair".
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Spain's Digital Plus breaks 2 million subs mark
From David del Valle in MadridSpain's digital DTH platform, Digital Plus, owned by the largest pay-TV group in the country Sogecable, has surpassed 2 million subscribers, with total clients rising over 9 per cent in a year
The company claims to have a potential audience of 6,5 million viewers with the Spanish regions of Catalonian, Madrid and Andalucia taking the lion's share.To celebrate the 2 million subs mark, the platform will open its pay-TV channels up to all its subscribers from October 20-23 and will exclusively offer them the football match between Real Madrid and Barcelona on Canal Plus.
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TI strike deal with Sony Pictures
Telecom Italia (TI) will distribute Sony Pictures Television International (SPTI) movies to its broadband customers as it seeks to expand its media content.In a statement, TI said the Sony deal would allow the company to offer clients of its Alice service blockbusters such as The Da Vinci Code and Men in Black on demand.
'The agreement with Sony marks another step forward in the development of our offering of on-demand content for both IPTV and internet platforms,' said Massimo Castelli, TI's chief marketing officer.
TI's board previously announced that it would be focussing on 'broadband and media services in Italy and in Europe' and confirmed that it had signed an agreement with Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation to distribute 20th Century Fox films on its broadband internet provider.
Europe's fifth-largest phone company is also planning to make European football matches and Fox television programmes available to its Alice customers.
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ANT Galio Client to Scientific Atlanta
ANT plc has signed a licensing and distribution agreement with Scientific Atlanta, a Cisco company. Under the agreement, ANT will supply ANT Galio Client) as well as its ANT Fresco browser and the Alcatel IPTV OMC client for incorporation within models of Scientific Atlanta's IPTV set-top boxes.
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Wednesday 27th September
Ireland set for mobile TV trial
ProSiebenSat.1 sale rumoured
Motorola enhances next-gen digital video platform
ABC asks for mobile TV space
Canal Digital takes MediaHighway
HEF Bredbånd accelerates triple-play
Vietnam set for commercial mobile TV
Ireland set for mobile TV trial
3, Ireland's mobile media network, has been awarded a licence by regulator ComReg to trial broadcast TV services using DVB-H technology over mobile handsets. The licence takes effect immediately and runs for one year.
Robert Finnegan, 3's Managing Director commented: "3 Italy was first in Europe to launch broadcast TV over mobile, so as a Group we are already leading the development of this new technology. Ireland has a high take-up of digital TV services compared to many EU countries with 42% of all households using digital TV services. DVB-H brings the benefits of Digital TV to mobile. Mobile TV is important to 3 and to the Irish market, as consumers demand more sophisticated mobile services."
The Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Noel Dempsey, TD, said: "I welcome all developments in the digital television area. It is particularly important that Ireland rolls out a digital terrestrial television network in the coming years and that the full range of digital services become available to the Irish citizen."
3's sister company in Italy launched its DVB-H service called WalkTV earlier in 2006, and is already broadcasting mobile TV to a large audience, with 140,000 customers signing up in just six weeks.
German TV group ProSiebenSat.1 Media could once again be set for new ownership following the failed bid by Axel Springer AG earlier in 2006.
According to Focus magazine, Apax Partners Worldwide LLP and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are negotiating to buy the commercial broadcaster, with French channel TF1 also named among those interested.
Saban failed to gain regulatory approval for a E4.2 billion deal. Springer last year agreed to buy common shares of ProSiebenSat.1 for E23.37 each and preference shares for E14.11 euros apiece. The common shares have voting rights, while the preference shares do not carry voting rights.
Haim Saban, the US billionaire who together with six private equity companies controls ProSiebenSat.1, now wants a price of E30 according to reports. Saban and the other private equity investors own a combined 50.5 per cent stake in the company and 88 per cent of the voting rights.
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Motorola enhances next-gen digital video platformWireless and broadband communication group Motorola has enhanced its next-generation video network platform with the acquisition of software applications developer Vertasent, whose technology enables services such as content-on-demand or IPTV to share resources and be delivered over a common infrastructure. Financial terms of the completed transaction were not disclosed.
Vertasent’s applications manage the elements in a ‘switched’ digital video network – a key area of interest for cable operators. A switched video architecture can increase available bandwidth in a cable network by dynamically transmitting only those channels currently being watched in a given neighborhood.
Motorola has identified three key benefits that the Vertasent system can offer service providers: (1) an open platform for expanding their programme offering to potentially include millions of live and on-demand titles; (2) the additional flexibility to more efficiently migrate to an all-digital network architecture; and (3) the ability to stream video programming to any device.
"Motorola is today delivering solutions that make seamless video – in and out of the home – a reality. Vertasent will play a critical role in our technology strategy, by providing the software ‘glue’ that unifies the management of advanced services and the standards-based video components in the network," said Dan Moloney, President, Motorola Connected Home Solutions.
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ABC asks for mobile TV space
From Rose Major in MelbourneAustralian public broadcaster the ABC has requested that some of the available DTT spectrum shortly to be auctioned off by the government be set aside for its content.
In its submission to the current Senate inquiry on the government’s media bill, the ABC said that if the spectrum is used to launch a mobile DTT service, Australian viewers should have access to domestic content on the service.
"The ABC believes that there is likely to be a case for mandating access for the national broadcaster to a certain percentage of the spectrum to ensure that quality Australian content is able to be accessed by Australians through these new services," the
submission said."The ABC notes that most content providers for the current Sydney mobile television trial are subscription television channels that carry minimal Australian content. Access could be mandated for the ABC to provide a channel of short-form Australian information and other local video content suitable for this new portable broadcasting platform."
As well as mobile services, the ABC said it would also be interested in providing content to any interactive-television services which might be launched on the available spectrum, but did not ask for access to be mandated on such a service.
A request was also made to allow the ABC to broadcast sports events on its digital-only channel, ABC2. The broadcaster argued that some events which are on the list of sports protected for free-to-air TV do not get shown at all, and the spirit of the list would be better served by these events being shown on some form of free-to-air TV.
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Canal Digital takes MediaHighway
NDS MediaHighway middleware will be part of new set-top boxes (STB) to be deployed by the Nordic TV distributor Canal Digital in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland.
NDS’s middleware is being integrated with Conax’s conditional access technology for the deployment – anticipated in 2007. The solution employs DVB-S2 on the ST - 7100 chipset, allowing for rapid and high quality operation.
Caroline Le Bigot, Vice President and General Manager of NDS France, commented, "We are very pleased that Canal Digital has chosen NDS MediaHighway for their middleware needs. We are confident that MediaHighway will add value to Canal Digital’s offering, as well as its customers’ experience. This new deal continues NDS’s momentum in the middleware space, with Canal Digital being one of a number of important TV distributors and operators to choose MediaHighway solutions in recent months."
Terje Storhaug, CTO of Canal Digital, said the MediaHighway solution provided up-to-date features for its customers and portability across all of CanalDigital’s operating countries.
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HEF Bredbånd accelerates triple-play
HEF Bredbånd A/S, the service provider arm of the HEF utility company serving the Vesthimmerland region of Northern Denmark, is to build a new 5,000 kilometre fibre optic network based on the Cisco Internet Protocol Next-Generation Network (IP NGN) architecture with ServiceFlex design.
The new infrastructure aims to bring ‘triple-play’ entertainment- and business-grade communication services, including IPTV featuring 150 channels and video-on-demand (VoD), to more than 80,000 customers. The equal access network using Cisco Fibre to the Home (FTTH) Ethernet technology will help enable HEF Bredbånd A/S to support
"Service providers worldwide, like HEF Bredbånd A/S, are pursuing converged IP Next Generation Network strategies because they are proving to be critical to providing current and future services, increasing infrastructure efficiencies, and enabling the value-added network and service control that they need to support competitive differentiation and enable profitability for long-term success," said Niels Christian Furu, managing director, Nordics for Cisco.
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Vietnam set for commercial mobile TVNokia has agreed a deal with Vietnam Multimedia to launch commercial mobile broadcast TV services based on Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld (DVB-H) technology in two key Vietnamese cities by the end of 2006. The agreement, Nokia's first commercial mobile TV service rollout in the Asia Pacific region, is also among the first of Nokia's commercial rollouts globally.
Nokia is currently spearheading several trials in Asia Pacific, Europe and North America countries. VTC, Vietnam's leading national broadcaster and operator in digital broadcasting, will make available its mobile pay-TV services to consumer subscribers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City by end-2006.
Jawahar Kanjilal, Director, Experiences, Nokia Multimedia Asia Pacific said the launch marked the beginning of "exciting times in the Asia Pacific broadcasting industry, bringing digital television to consumers' pockets and ushering in a new era of personal interactive entertainment."
Under the agreement, Nokia and VTC are committed to jointly propel the consumer adoption of mobile entertainment services in Vietnam. After taking mobile TV services commercial in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh in 2006, VTC plans to extend the coverage to a national level over a two-year period.
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High St. set to suffer from video downloading
IPTV for Croatia
MTG launches new sports portal
Ensequence and TVWorks enhance NA cable
ONO unifies its TV offer and stops distributing DTT channels
ESPN goes global with HD
High St. set to suffer from video downloadingThe video download revolution is growing at such a speed that within three years it will be standard to download videos over the Internet rather than buy them from the high street, new research from ICM, commissioned by the British Internet Broadcasting Company (BiBC), has revealed.
Research indicates that 85 per cent of respondents would buy movies or other visual media downloaded from the Internet This demonstrates that whilst music downloads set the stage for the digital revolution, this is set to be eclipsed by the downloading of visual content. To back up this statistic there is little difference between people’s preferred viewing medium, with 81 per cent favouring to view downloaded material on a PC, compared to 83 per cent on a TV. People are not keen on viewing content on a mobile, with only 21 per cent expressing an interest in downloading movies and other visual media on this device.
Other key results from the research suggest that 41 per cent of respondents would be willing to pay between £2 (E3) and £5 to download a movie that could be kept permanently, however 24 per cent would pay nothing. 24 per cent of people prefer buy-to-own movies (rising to almost 1/3 in the 18-24 age category), yet 36 per cent would prefer an all inclusive monthly fee with unlimited. 28 per cent would only be willing to pay less than £10/month for the monthly subscription, whilst 40 per cent would be willing to pay above £10.
Paul Hague, managing director of BiBC, commented, "these statistics offer further proof that video downloads are seeping through into popular culture. People now understand the multiple uses of the Internet and feel more able to exploit the possibilities. For years people have talked about the death of the high street, and video downloads are set to offer a new challenge. This is particularly pertinent to the DVD market, which cannot compete with downloads, as they cannot possibly offer the same cheap, environmentally-friendly, high-quality, and secure offering that video downloads can provide."
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Deutsche Telekom subsidiary Croatian T-Com is set to provide TV of the future via an IPTV solution from Siemens Communications: With a broadband connection and set-top box, people there can benefit from the comprehensive ‘MAXtv’ offer.
"Our MAXtv IPTV service offers a completely new way to watch TV," said Vedran Perisic, Director for Content Development and Management at Croatian T-Com. In the carrier’s view, MAXtv will permanently change future entertainment offerings as well as consumers’ usage behaviour. Vedran Perisic said the new TV, video, and interactive services with their high digital quality were unique in Croatia. "With MAXtv we’re giving our end customers the flexibility and independence to decide what entertainment programs they want to consume and when."
Christian Unterberger, President of Fixed Networks at Siemens Communications, said that Croatian T-Com had gained itself a major advantage by using the H.264 compression standard from the outset, suggesting that, as a result, the carrier would have no problems at all introducing HDTV over DSL at a later date, and at an economical cost.
Croatian T-Com is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom. The company was founded in Croatia on December 28, 1998, after the combined state postal and telecommunication services had been separated. Croatian T-Com and Croatian Post launched their respective operational business on January 1, 1999.
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MTG launches new sports portalInternational entertainment broadcasting group Modern Times Group has launched a new dedicated sports web site in Sweden, Norway and Denmark – www.viasatsport.com. The web site will enable viewers to access a wide range of live coverage of major sporting events, as well as related news and information services. The launch coincides with the initial group stages of the 2006/2007 UEFA Champions’ League season and the site will provide live streaming of all games from the current season, as well as of the qualifying matches for the 2008 UEFA European Football Championships in Austria and Switzerland. The coverage is being offered as ‘pay-per-view’ events, or on a ‘season ticket’ or ‘VIP’ basis.
The web site will offer live scores, results and statistics, news and feature services, profiles, forums and sports TV Guides in local languages. www.viasatsport.com will feature extensive coverage of a wide range of sports including football, golf, ice hockey, tennis, motor sport, handball, skiing, track and field athletics, and NFL American football.
The launch of the new sports portal builds on the success of Viasat Broadcasting’s www.onside.dk site, which has become one of the most successful Danish sports portals.
Subscribers to the Viasat ‘Gold’ digital satellite TV package will be offered www.viasatsport.com <http://www.viasatsport.com> services at a reduced price.
Hans-Holger Albrecht, President and CEO of MTG, commented: "The launch of www.viasatsport. further builds on Viasat’s position as the number one sports television broadcaster in the Nordic region. It also demonstrates our commitment to utilise all available channels and sports rights, in order to maximise the offering to our customers through as many windows and platforms as possible.
"The demand for quality dedicated sports coverage and services is huge and only continues to grow, and we always seek to obtain the Internet rights to the TV broadcasting assets that we secure. Our ambition is to fully leverage our extensive portfolio of sports rights and online properties to create one of the region’s leading sports portals. Combined with our four premium dedicated Viasat Sport channels, we can now offer customers an unrivalled online sports experience and the most complete site in the Nordic market.
"This new initiative springs from the creation of our New Media focused group, which is tasked with exploring and capitalising on the MTG Group’s wide range of content and services to maximise our potential and make the most of new opportunities."
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Ensequence and TVWorks enhance NA cable
Interactive TV authoring software and services provider Ensequence is teaming up with and TVWorks, a joint-venture between Comcast Communications and Cox Communications focused on developing next-generation interactive cable technology and services, to help bring enhanced television applications to North American cable subscribers. Under the terms of the partnership, programming networks, advertisers and cable operators can use Ensequence interactive TV authoring software to quickly and easily create interactive TV applications that run on the TVWorks enhanced TV platform.
Comcast and Cox selected the TVWorks platform as their interactive application platform on Motorola and Scientific Atlanta set-top boxes, which are already in more than 13 million customer homes.
"The Ensequence on-Q Create software provides the right balance between ease of use and depth of functionality," said Irv Kalick, President, TVWorks Applications Division. "Ensequence software is modular, based on open standards and plugs right into our existing standards-based platform, which is a huge benefit for the cable industry."
Dalen Harrison, Ensequence CEO, said the companies had been working together for the past year to push the limits of the interactive TV experience that can be delivered to digital cable viewers cost-effectively and quickly, using Ensequence authoring tools."
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ONO unifies its TV offer and stops distributing DTT channels
From David del Valle in Madrid
Spain's largest cable company ONO is to unify its TV offer across Spain whereby, from the beginning of October, all the networks it operates in the country, including AUNA's, will offer the same TV service in all the demarcations.
Until now, the former AUNA-owned networks, recently acquired by ONO, were distributing a different TV service. Now, with this move all ONO's networks will offer three TV packages - Familiar, Estrella and Premium- along with telephony and the Internet.
ONO has also decided to stop distributing Spain's existing 22 DTT channels to avoid paying for them following the Government’s authorisation for TV operators to get a fee for those channels. The decision represents a setback to DTT penetration in Spain and it is expected that other cable operators will follow suit.
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ESPN goes global with HDESPN has announced its continued expansion into new technology with the launch of its High Definition (HD) syndication and delivery business which will be formally launched at the Sportel trade show in Monaco 16th October. ESPN has already launched two HD services in the US and now ESPN will be one of the largest syndicators of Sports HD content internationally.
"As passionate sports fans we have been at the forefront of sports HD development in the US and are now looking to continue that trend internationally by delivering the best quality programmes in HD around the world" said Russell Wolff, ESPN Executive Vice President and Managing Director of ESPN International.
Key programming that ESPN will be delivering to clients includes: NCAA Basketball and NCAA Football; NFL (certain regions); Horseracing; Motorsports (including NHRA) and other sports, with more than 2,000 hours in total available
"Having seen the growth of HD internationally, and having listened to what our clients need and want, it is the perfect time for ESPN International to be delivering top-quality programming in HD," said Murray Barnett, Senior Director, Sales, ESPN International
All ESPN high-definition programming is produced in the 720 progressive scan format, and is available to cable systems and satellite providers in other formats, including 1080i.
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Monday 25th September
Yahoo! bid for facebook?
Comcast "net neutrality problem"
DivX reaps $150m in IPO
Orange out as two remain for AOL UK
MTV buys gamer
Comcast Achieves 1 Million VoIP Customers
iDTVs make STBs redundant – eventually
Yahoo! has been linked to a possible $1 billion bid for Facebook, the US college-based social networking site. The news follows a profits warning from Yahoo! based on a downturn in online advertising.
US press report the company has held "serious discussions" with privately owned Facebook. Yahoo said it was speculation but added: "Community has been a major part of our strategy for some time."
Meantime Richard Parsons, CEO of Time Warner, warned companies looking to acquire Internet sensations like YouTube and Facebook would need to take a "big leap of faith" to pay current valuations on the takeover targets. He told the F T media companies wanted to increase traffic to their Web sites to compete with Google but valuations of $1 billion on YouTube and Facebook were too high. Time Warner is in some ways still suffering from the massive valuation it placed on AOL several years ago.
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Comcast "net neutrality problem"
Comcast doesn't have any plans to limit or prioritize Internet traffic on its network and doesn't see the need for government involvement in the "Net neutrality" issue, chief operating officer Stephen Burke has said. The single stupidest thing Comcast could do to its customers is limit their ability to go where they want on the Internet, he said.
The comments come amid a growing debate over Net neutrality - whether broadband operators should be allowed to restrict traffic from certain Web sites based on the amount of bandwidth they use.
Telecommunications firms like AT&T argue that since they've spent so much building up their broadband networks, they should be able to charge online companies higher fees to deliver their bandwidth-intense traffic. In response providers like Google and Yahoo have been pushing for Net neutrality legislation that would prohibit network companies from charging them higher fees.
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Digital Media software maker DivX Inc. raised $145.6 million with an initial public offering that priced above its forecast range.
The San Diego-based company develops technology that compresses digital video. The company's video software has been downloaded more than 200 million times, according to its own estimates. It also has also been expanding into content production and recently launched Stage6, its own online video sharing site. The bulk of its revenue comes from licensing its technology to consumer electronics manufacturers. About 82 percent of the company's total sales last year were generated by licenses to hardware device makers.
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Orange out as two remain for AOL UK
France Telecom's Orange unit has pulled out of the bidding for the UK Internet connection business of AOL. That leaves BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse in the running. AOL's UK Internet connection business is the last European unit the U.S. group is seeking to sell as part of a general overhaul of its operations across the Atlantic.AOL announced it would sell its French access unit to Neuf Cegetel for $365 million, and is selling its Internet access business in Germany to Telecom Italia.
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MTV buys gamer
MTV is to acquire Harmonix Music Systems, a maker of music-oriented video games, for $175 million in cash. Its main product, Guitar Hero, is a console game developed for Sony’s PlayStation 2 that equips players with a simulator that looks like a guitar while promising them the ability to feel like a rock star."It is about people coming to MTV who are passionate about music and wanting to interact on deeper and deeper levels," said Christina Norman, the president of MTV. "It’s not just about wearing the T-shirt."
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Comcast Achieves 1 Million VoIP CustomersComcast now has more than one million Digital Voice customers, a milestone the cable giant achieved in less than two years. The company also claims it recently crossed the 10 million high-speed internet customer threshold. That accomplishment came after several high-growth quarters for the broadband service and the close of the Adelphia transaction.
Comcast also said it serves 23.3 million cable customers.To keep pace with the growing demand for its triple play of video, broadband and phone services, Comcast said it expects to add more than 4,000 jobs nationwide this year, up on its previously announced plans of 3,000 new positions.
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iDTVs make STBs redundant – eventually
IMS Research is forecasting nearly 40 per cent of TV sets shipped in 2011 will be enabled with some type of digital tuner enabling reception of digital TV without the need for a set-top box. This proportion is up from an estimated 7 per cent in 2005.
Based on The Worldwide Market for Television Sets, IMS Research forecasts that worldwide rollouts of digital TV services, as well as HDTV programming, will result with suppliers integrating digital tuners, particularly for digital terrestrial TV (DTT) reception, into TV sets.
"The strong adoption of DTT in Western Europe is already incenting some major brand suppliers to make DTT tuners a de facto standard in many flat panel display models," stated Anna Hunt, research director at IMS Research. "Although iDTVs supporting ATSC and DVB-T standards are likely to be most common, TV sets with built-in digital cable and digital satellite reception are also expected to penetrate more markets. Growth of the digital free-to-air satellite platform worldwide and supplier driven force such as the CableREADY initiative in the US are likely to drive additional tuner integration."
As more suppliers integrate digital tuners into TVs, multi-platform iDTVs are also likely to become more common, as is already happening in Japan and the US.Hence the question many ask is if the set-top box will become extinct due to strong iDTV uptake. Based on extensive research on both the set-top box and TV sets markets, IMS Research believes that both products will co-exist for some time.
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Operator driven deployments of feature-rich set-top boxes will continue in many of the markets were iDTVs thrive. For free-to-air satellite and DTT platforms, basic low-cost boxes will be key to enabling full transition to digital broadcasting. IMS Research deducts from its studies that iDTVs will not become a true threat to set-top box suppliers, at least not during this decade.
