UK communications minister Lord Carter has defended plans to levy a £6-a-year tax (E7.1) on every phone line to raise up to £1.5 billion to help pay for the next generation of super-fast internet networks, as the most transparent way of investing in a critical part of Britain’s infrastructure. Having looked at the investment plans […]

Sci Fi has been found to be in "serious and significant" breach of its licence conditions after the channel failed to produce a recording of its output. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received a viewer complaint over the volume levels of commercials on Virgin Media feed. The ASA brought in Ofcom when Sci Fi admitted […]

From Branislav Pekic in Rome Italian commercial broadcaster Mediaset has requested that the European Court in Luxembourg annuls the decision of the European Commission regarding the illegality of state subsidies for the acquisition of DTT decoders. At question is the European Commission's decision of 2007, that subsidies awarded by Italy for the years 2004 and […]

Boxer, the Teracom-owned DTT platform has acquired a majority stake in its Finnish equivalent PlusTV. Existing backers Baker Capital and IT Provider Funds will remain minority shareholders. "PlusTV has established itself as a leading Finnish pay-TV operator and has great continued potential. We count on developing synergies between our businesses in Sweden, Denmark and Finland […]

Phorm, the ad technology company, posted a pre-tax loss of $49.8m in 2008, up from $32.8m in 2007. However, the company insisted the launch of its controversial behavioural ad targeting technology in the UK is on track. The company said that as at 31 December 2008, the company had net assets of $22.4m, with cash […]

UK media regulator Ofcom is proposing to crack down on the amount of “sustained sex scenes and sexual language” shown on TV immediately after the 9pm watershed, to better protect younger viewers from explicit content broadcast free-to-air by so-called “babe channels” such as Playboy TV and Babeworld TV. ….

Japan’s upper house has approved a revision to the Copyright Law making downloading of pirated content illegal. The revision will go into effect on January 1st. Uploading of pirated music and video content is already proscribed, but downloading has been tolerated as long as it is for personal use. Legislators have prescribed no penalties for […]

Tony Ball, the Chairman of Kabel Deutschland and former Chief Executive of BSkyB, has joined the BT Board as a non-executive director. Between 1999 and 2003 he was Chief Executive of BSkyB plc, where he drove the rapid take up of Sky's digital TV offering. During the past four he has been chair of private […]

BBC Worldwide has appointed Luke Bradley-Jones, the head of its digital operations in the US, as the new managing director of BBC.com. Bradley-Jones, who has held the New York-based role of executive vice-president of digital media and business development for BBC Worldwide for the past two years, replaces Kym Niblock, who is leaving the corporation […]

From Colin Mann in London The UK government has published its Digital Britain report, which sets out the importance of the Digital Economy to the nation's economic future, and how it will drive future industrial capability and competitiveness. It makes the case that the United Kingdom's communications infrastructure and increased Digital Participation are key to […]