From David Del Valle in Madrid The broadband market is growing strongly with plans to reach 8.2 million broadband Internet lines by the end of the year, a penetration rate of 18.4 per cent, against 2.1 million connections back in 2003. Approximately 57 per cent of households in Spain are expected to have broadband services […]

The Federal Communications Commission has granted ViaSat blanket authority for domestic operation of up to 1,000 earth stations aboard commercial aircraft. The agency said the earth stations will provide Aeronautical Mobile Satellite Service using standard Ku-band frequency ranges to link with leased transponders on the AMC-6 satellite. According to FCC documents, the ViaSat aircraft earth […]

The Asia Pacific pay-TV industry has hailed an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) decision on the preservation of C-band spectrum for satellite TV services in Asia as “a long-awaited positive outcome on a contentious issue”. According to the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA), the decision taken by the United Nations-led ITU World Radio […]

Hong Kong’s two domestic free television stations, Asia Television Limited and Television Broadcasts Limited, will phase in digital terrestrial television (DTT) services from December 31st. Secretary for Commerce & Economic Development Frederick Ma said Hong Kong will be the first to adopt the national DTT transmission standard developed by the Mainland. The initial launch will […]

Virgin Media has put plans on hold for nationwide IPTV services. The company has conceded that it will be at least 2009 before it can replicate its full range of services – TV, broadband, phone and mobile – for the half of the population that live outside its cable footprint.

The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) is pushing for the adoption of an “efficient” digital rights management (DRM) system, saying that this would give “a fillip to the fast-growing Indian digital entertainment and media industry”. Ficci and PriceWaterhouseCoopers conducted a study on the Indian entertainment and media industry. The report called […]

BT Vision has signed a deal with Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment to make around 150 films distributed by Paramount available from the BT Vision. Download Store users will now be able to download and own current and classic titles distributed by Paramount and watch them on PCs and portable devices.

On2 Technologies, a player in video compression solutions, has inked an extensive agreement with Texas Instruments (TI), under which the two companies will collaborate on technology to implement On2's TrueMotion VP6 and VP7 video compression formats on TI's OMAP Platform and DaVinci technology for mobile handsets and digital video applications. Under their agreement, the two […]

Ashley Highfield, future media director of the BBC, has said BBC iPlayer has cost around £4.5 million (E6.5m), as part of a £130 million, five-year plan to transition from tape to digital. On bandwidth management, Highfield told Groklaw, the open source site, he had added the ability to iPlayer users to turn off bandwidth sharing […]

Warner Bros has announced it will be launching a number of branded, video-on-demand, non-linear channels on a subscription- and advertiser-supported basis over a variety of global delivery platforms. The on-demand and broadband models make financial sense, says Jeffrey Schlesinger, Warner Bros International's president. “The costs here are much lower than creating a linear channel. You […]