DTH broadcasters beaming programming over the state of Tamul Nadu must pay a 30 per cent entertainment tax, local reports state. The idea is said to ensure continued support for State-backed Arasu Cable. The tax will directly hit Sun Direct, the local DTH player, with a 17 per cent market share. Other media-related taxes levied […]
Politicians could be barred from making decisions on media mergers under measures to be included in a new communications bill, the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has said. The proposal would end the arrangement under which the business secretary can block the acquisition of media companies on public interest grounds. Hunt told the Royal Television Society […]
UK culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has countered suggestions that tackling the problem of material that is being unlawfully distributed online is an assault on the “freedom” of the Internet. He told the Royal Television Society Cambridge Convention that unlawfully distributing copyrighted material was “theft, and a direct assault on the freedoms and rights of creators […]
French media regulator ARCEP has received four applications by the deadline for licences to spectrum in the 2.6 GHz and 800 MHz frequency bands, to be used for ultra high-speed mobile networks. The four applications came from: Bouygues Telecom, Free Mobile, Orange France and Société Française du Radiotéléphone (SFR). ARCEP will now examine these applications, […]
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 […]
CSA, the French TV and radio regulator, has proposed the immediate adoption of the DVB-T2 broadcasting standard and MPEG-4 compression standard for all new DTT channels. If adopted by the government, the recommendation would require most consumers to change their STBs and TV sets for equipment that is not expected to be available to the […]
Canadian pay-TV producer Astral Media says foreign Internet competitors such as movie provider Netflix should be subject to the same rules as Canadian broadcasters, noting digital competitors don’t contribute to local programming or pay taxes. “They come here and don’t spend a penny,” chief executive Ian Greenberg said. “They don’t have any rules whatsoever. Taxes […]
Jeremy Hunt, the UK culture secretary, is to ask regulator Ofcom to define a means of measuring cross-media power in the UK and consider whether to cap market share of groups which have too much influence over British media; i.e. (for now) News Corp and the BBC. The minister wants Ofcom to create an agreed […]
The UK government’s largest ever spectrum auction has been delayed, with the multibillion pound sell-off now expected in the second quarter of next year at the earliest. Ofcom had been expected to publish the terms of the auction this month, but after veiled threats of legal action from a number of carriers including O2, the […]
Mexico’s Federal Telecommunications Commission (FTC) has licensed a record 146 new digital terrestrial channels in the 10 months to June. The new services bring the total authorised DTT channels to 224. Mexico is scheduled to switch off its analogue transmissions in 2015, although this decision – decreed by the FTC – is under examination by […]