Although governments are keen to reap the benefits of high-speed Internet access, they need to reform regulations to help those building networks to provide it, according to a senior Google executive. Delivering a keynote address at the Broadband World Forum in Paris, Kevin Lo, Google’s general manager of access, told delegates: “Regulation can get in […]
France’s Autorité de la concurrence (Competition Authority) has declared that the Canal Plus Group has not complied with a number of commitments – some deemed essential – made at the acquisition of rival pay-TV platform TPS in 2006. It has withdrawn the decision to authorise the transaction, obliging the parties to notify the operation again […]
Getting its defence in early, Google has said it would be unworkable for it to block entire sites. In a speech to the Royal Television Society on Wednesday it has been widely trailed that UK culture secretary Jeremy Hunt will call on search engines, ISPs and transaction companies to play a more active role in […]
Everything Everywhere, the UK mobile joint venture between Orange and T-Mobile, has revealed the first in a series of significant changes planned for its mobile TV service over the next 12 months. The changes are designed to improve the mobile TV experience it provides its customers and it predicts a six-fold increase in subscribers over […]
Google is to launch its web-TV service in the UK within the next six months, according to reports. The launch was confirmed by CEO Eric Schmidt speaking at the Edinburgh International TV Festival. Schmidt said Google TV did not threaten broadcasters and would enable them to experiment with new formats online. He defended the company’s […]
Sky Italia is launching an ad-hoc 3D channel on September 6, with movies, entertainment and sports featuring heavily. The hope is that the channel will become a driving force for sales of 3D TV devices, which are still rare in Italy. Subscribers equipped with an HD set-top box and special glasses, will be able to […]
If you restrict legal access to your content does that increase piracy? Yes, says TorrentFreak revealing that since Fox Network restricted its shows to an eight-day catch up on Hulu and Fox.com, illegal downloads of those shows has more than doubled. The torrent news Web site tracked several popular Fox shows–including Hell’s Kitchen and MasterChef–on […]
Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt will tell the audience at the Edinburgh TV Festival this week that “Google needs you” according to The Guardian. In the annual MacTaggart lecture Schmidt is expected to say Google wants to help the industry and draw a line under a history of fraught legal actions with studios and broadcasters over […]
The UK’s Competition Commission (CC) has provisionally found that Sky’s control over pay-TV movie rights in the UK is restricting competition between pay-TV providers, leading to higher prices and reduced choice and innovation for subscribers. Sky has for many years held exclusively the rights to the movies of all six major Hollywood studios in the […]
News Corporation took a 22 per cent hit to its quarter profits on the losses caused by the sale of MySpace. The effect of the closure of the News of the World won’t be seen until the next reporting period but, as today’s numbers make clear, newspapers don’t make a significant contribution to the whole. […]