YouView, the much-delayed Internet TV venture, will finally be put to the test by members of the public this week after three years in development – and should launch nationally this summer. An initial trial of some 350 homes was confirmed by YouView’s board, which is chaired by Lord Alan Sugar. While about 100 employees […]
Is Sky planning its own mobile network? According to reports, it has been in talks with both Orange and T-Mobile as it ponders a bid for the airwaves put up for sale by their Everything Everywhere consortium. Mobile would make Sky a full-fledged multi-play provider with 4G capability. The investment required would be £3-4 billion […]
SES is well ahead with developing its five-pillar strategy for expansion, CEO Romain Bausch told investors and analysts at the operator’s Investors Day meeting in London last week. The ‘pillars’ themselves are straightforward enough but implementing them has created a huge amount of work and restructuring at the Luxembourg-based business. SES is now firmly focussed […]
The BBC iPlayer application is set to launch on Microsoft’s platform within the next two weeks. The application is already available for Android, Apple and Blackberry devices, so adding support for the Windows Phone platform was inevitable. The iPlayer app enables users to catch up on BBC programming through their smartphone, and also view the […]
Malaysia’s newest satellite Measat-3b isn’t due for launch until late next year but that hasn’t stopped Measat’s sister company Astro DTH reserving 18 transponders on the craft. Astro’s order is for the full anticipated 15-year life of the satellite. The order also means that Measat-3b is now 50 per cent full. Astrium is building the […]
DISH and the TV networks ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC are going to court on the legality of the introduction of a user-enabled commercial skipping technology branded AutoHop. DISH wants a declaratory judgment (for which it has filed in New York) while the networks are claiming (in the California court) that the device breaches their […]
David Cameron has defended Jeremy Hunt’s handling of Rupert Murdoch’s bid for BSkyB in the light of new evidence showing that Hunt was privately pushing for the takeover to be allowed before he was appointed to oversee the process. In an interview on ITV Cameron said Hunt had acted “impartially” from the moment he took […]
I can truthfully testify that trying to listen to the Leveson Inquiry while doing anything else is a recipe for doing both things poorly. The testimony and, more disappointingly, the questioning is soporific in the extreme. Mr Jay QC, counsel for the Inquiry, has mostly been given the benefit of the doubt – surely he’s […]
NBCUniversal is in talks to buy out Microsoft’s 50 per cent stake in joint venture MSNBC.com. NBCU parent Comcast is conducting due diligence and the partnership could be unwound by this summer. “Discussions are taking place,” Amy Lynn, director of communications at NBC News, told WSJ. NBC and Microsoft joined forces in 1996 to create […]
In one respect the headline is not new. The fact that Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES will not adopt arch-rival Eutelsat’s adventurous Ka-band strategy has been known for some time. But what is new is the determination that SES president Romain Bausch now re-states the SES message. Addressing investors and analysts this week Bausch stated bluntly […]