The first global standard offering an in-home, high-speed network capable of delivering room-to-room HDTV has been agreed by ITU. The standard, published under the G.hn banner, promises high quality multimedia over power, coaxial, phone and other home network wiring. It will give up to 20 times the throughput of existing wireless technologies and three times […]

Swisscom has started connecting Swiss homes to its fibre-to-the-home network and expects to have hooked up 100,000 homes by the end of 2009. The company has already laid out a fibre-to-the-node network to neighbourhoods and fibre-to-the-office to large companies, and has now started work on connecting homes with fibre-to-the-home in Zurich, Basel and Geneva. Swisscom […]

The BBC iPlayer's series stacking feature – allowing Viewers to stream any episode, after it has first been broadcast, for the duration of an entire series. – is now available on Virgin’s digital cable TV service. The 'series catch up' option has been added to the iPlayer’s cable home screen, bringing functionality that has been […]

China has confirmed that it will build its first high-capacity optic fibre network nationwide, which is able to carry Internet, TV and phone services through one network. The Ministry of Science and Technology signed an agreement with the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) on building the national network. The backbone network of […]

Virgin Media has confirmed that it will introduce network monitoring technology in 2009 to specifically target and restrict BitTorrent traffic. The move will represent a major policy shift for the ISP/cable provider. Virgin Media currently temporarily throttles the bandwidth of its heaviest downloaders across all applications at peak times, rather than targeting and shaping specific […]

From Colin Mann in London Quad-play service provider Virgin Media has launched the UK's first 50Mb broadband service, which it proposes to roll out to all 12.6 million homes covered by its fibre optic network during the Summer of 2009. By the end of 2008, Virgin Media aims to have completed deployment to 40 per […]

The first official European Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) ranking shows smaller countries leading the way in FTTH connections. Mid-term projections show, however, that bigger economies are closing the gap. Sweden, Norway and Slovenia are the leaders in the first official European ranking of FTTH penetration published by the FTTH Council Europe today. The ranking shows the percentage […]

Parks Associates has reported that almost 66 per cent of US consumers have altered their spending habits in the fourth quarter of 2008 as a result of the country’s deteriorating economic conditions. These changes have the greatest impact on entertainment spending outside the home, according to Digital Media Evolution, a consumer survey from Parks Associates, […]

From David Del Valle in Madrid Mexican TV group Televisa is injecting an extra E52 million into the Spanish commercial network La Sexta, in which it has a 40 per cent share, taking its total investment of more than E265 million by the end of 2009. The injection forms part of a capital enlargement of […]

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology confirmed that the country will issue third generation (3G) mobile licences by the end of 2008 or early next year. Minister Li Yizhong said at a media briefing that China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom have prepared well for 3G licensing. “After the proper procedures, we will […]