Spain’s largest cable company ONO has asked the Telecommunications Market Commission (CMT) to give it back an amount of €8.3 million paid as a tax to the state-owned broadcaster RTVE over the last three years. The operator argues that the current legislation that obliges telco companies to dedicate 0.9 per cent of their revenues to financing the broadcaster is unconstitutional [...]
Sony says it will assess a proposal from its biggest shareholder, Daniel Loeb’s Third Point hedge fund, that the group should sell up to a fifth of its music and movies business. Loeb argues a partial spin-off of Sony Entertainment would free up cash to help the struggling electronics division and could boost Sony’s stock price by 60 per cent. [...]
Last week SES revealed its latest set of trading numbers and while the company stressed to the market that its underlying trade was doing well, and was expected to grow by 4.5 per cent during the rest of this year, two sets of comments were taken by the market as being of key importance. Item Number 1 was that SES [...]
Docomo of Japan has wholly acquired MCV Guam, the largest cable television and Internet service provider in Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The purchase from MCV Acquisition, LLC, the holding company of MCV, worth approximately $129.8 million, was made by a wholly owned holding company established in Guam by Docomo. The acquisition will enable Docomo pacific, [...]
Liberty Global Inc has put its Chellomedia television-channel business up for sale, in a move that it hopes could net between $800 million and $1 billion, reports the WSJ. Chellomedia is Liberty Global’s content division, producing and distributing TV channels in a variety of genres including sports, movies and cooking to roughly 390 million households world-wide. Liberty Global is in [...]
TiVo posted a narrower first-quarter loss after adding 277,000 pay-TV users – the most pay-TV subscribers gained in a quarter in seven years. The net loss of $10.3 million compared with a loss of $20.8 million year earlier. The company is currently holding “constructive” talks with Liberty Global which is buying Virgin Media, a TiVo customer, Chief Executive Officer Tom [...]
Charlie Ergen, the chairman of Dish Network Corp has offered to buy bankrupt broadband company LightSquared Inc’s wireless airwaves, says Reuters. Ergen’s offer is said to be valued at $2 billion. LightSquared, which declared bankruptcy in May 2012, was bankrolled by hedge investor Philip Falcone. Falcone’s plans to introduce a new wireless network in the United States fell apart when [...]
Charlie Ergen’s attempt to buy cellular giant Sprint isn’t a done deal just yet, but Dish Network’s move on Sprint has certainly moved to the next level. Sprint has agreed to permit Dish Network to view “certain non-public information” and to “engage with Dish in discussions and negotiations” regarding the merger proposal made on April 15th. “We look forward to [...]
A few months ago, a 55” or 65” Sony Bravia 4K television would have cost both arms and legs. Now Sony has looked again and they’ll only cost one arm and a leg! ‘Priced to sell’ might be Sony’s mantra for these Bravia X9 LED beasts, which still come it at €4,500 for the 55” unit, and a pricier €7,000 [...]
Owen D Kurtin, a highly regarded satellite business observer from the law firm Kurtin PLLC, has suggested Intelsat is burdened down by huge levels of debt which makes it “all but impossible for the company to become profitable.” Intelsat is the largest satellite operator in the world and mounted an IPO in April that raised $328 million after fees and [...]
