Advanced Television

Broadband

BT ordered to block file-sharing website Newzbin2

Hollywood film studios can claim a significant win in their ongoing fight against online piracy, after the UK High Court ruled that dominant telco and leading ISP BT must block access to an illegal file-sharing website. BT users will no longer be able to download illegally films and TV shows for free from Newzbin2. The […]

July 28, 2011By Colin Mann

eircom plans €100m fibre rollout and IPTV launch

Irish telco eircom has announced Phase 1 of a plan to upgrade significantly Ireland’s telecommunications infrastructure by rolling out fibre-based access technologies delivering superfast broadband to customers. Separately, the company also announced it will launch television services in 2012. The company intends to serve 100,000 premises by summer 2012 in Phase 1 of a planned […]

July 28, 2011By Colin Mann

Fries queries ACCC Austar stance

Liberty Global president and chief executive Mike Fries has criticised the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) over its preliminary view that Foxtel’s proposed A$1.9 billion acquisition of regional pay-TV group Austar is anti-competitive Fries, who is also Chairman of Austar, noted that Australia is the only market that does not consider pay and free-to-air […]

July 28, 2011By Colin Mann

Brazil tops 11m pay-TV subs

Brazil’s National Telecoms Agency says that the country now has more than 11 million pay-TV subscribers. 1.3 million net new subs were added during the first half of this year, with DTH satellite taking just over half of that total. A total of 235,000 subs were added in June alone. DTH now has 5.61 million […]

July 28, 2011By Chris Forrester

Virgin Media down 36,000 customers

UK quad-play operator Virgin Media lost 36,000 customers in the three months to the end of June, but reported higher income from its remaining customers. According to Virgin Media, 90 per cent of the net disconnections were lower-value single or dual-play customers. The decline brings its total number of cable subscribers to 4.8 million. It […]

July 27, 2011

8% of US homes get broadband but not multi-channel video

Consumer research from Leichtman Research Group (LRG) finds that 8 per cent of US households get a broadband Internet service, but do not subscribe to a multi-channel video service, while 70 per cent of households get both broadband and multi-channel video services. Among this group getting broadband but not multi-channel video, the reason for not […]

July 27, 2011

Stofa Canal Digital deal scrapped

A €13.4 million deal that would have seen Danish triple-play operator Stofa – a subsidiary of private equity firm Ratos – acquire the Danish cable TV activities of Canal Digital is no longer to proceed following indications from competition bodies that approval of the deal was unlikely. Stofa signed an agreement in January to acquire […]

July 26, 2011By Colin Mann

Satellite costs Paraguay cable 40% of subs

Paraguay’s Cable Operators Association says some 40 per cent of its former pay-TV subscribers are now viewing signals direct from satellites. The Association’s 60 members have a presence in 55 main cities and regions of the country, and have now requested a meeting with Paraguay’s president to discuss what they see as a major problem. […]

July 26, 2011By Chris Forrester

Mobile data bandwidth usage up 77%

Findings from the H1 2011 Allot MobileTrends Report suggests that mobile data bandwidth usage continued its steady rise, with 77 per cent growth during the first half of 2011 based on data collected from the service optimisation and revenue generation solutions specialist’s worldwide mobile operator customers. The report found that video streaming continued to show […]

July 26, 2011

Nielsen to integrate STB data from Kantar Media

Nielsen, a global information and measurement company, and Kantar Media, a unit of Kantar, an information, insight and consultancy group that is part of WPP, have inked a multi-year agreement providing Nielsen with STB data from Kantar Media’s DIRECTView service for use in local TV audience measurement. Nielsen has developed a proprietary, hybrid methodology for […]

July 26, 2011