Advanced Television

Broadband

Alice TV adds new channels

French telco Alice has expanded its AliceBox offering to include 70 new channels for the IPTV service ‘Alice TV’. The new channels include a greater number of news, local and foreign channels, and brings the total number of channels available on the service up to 140. Alice has also started offering 32 channels in MPEG-4 […]

March 4, 2009

Cable should charge for TV on PCs

Just as Comcast and other Pay TV operators have announced plans to push high-value cable network programming to the PC, research from TDG suggests that their intention to not charge for this content could be a major strategic error and leave hundreds of millions in additional fees on the table. "Cable operators are working aggressively […]

March 4, 2009

Vivendi and Iliad take FT to EC over competition

Vivendi and broadband provider Iliad have joined together to file a complaint with the European competition authorities against France Telecom claiming it has abused its dominant market position in the country's fixed-line and broadband market. Vivendi chief Jean Bernard Lévy noted that 11 years after the market was open to competition, France Telecom still had […]

March 3, 2009

Ofcom green lights super-fast broadband

UK Media regulator Ofcom has ruled that it will present “no regulatory barriers” to the development of super-fast broadband infrastructure. The ruling will allow BT to proceed with an investment of £1.5 billion (E1.67bn) in the network, giving up to 20 million UK homes access to high-speed Internet. BT made clear it only wanted to […]

March 3, 2009

European cable revenues climb

Revenues in the European cable industry jumped more than 7% last year to E18.2 billion. Demand for digital television, internet broadband and telephony services grew sharply from 41 million subscriptions in 2007 to 51 million in 2008. Including the 43 million customers who watch analogue cable TV, the total number of subscriptions grew to 94 […]

March 3, 2009

Virgin Q4 "resilient", content drags

British cable operator Virgin Media posted fourth-quarter revenue and operating cashflow in line with forecast, and said it had continued to show good resilience in the face of the downturn. Virgin Media said it had made 15,000 net new customer additions in the quarter, compared with 24,000 a year ago, and sold 185,500 products of […]

February 25, 2009

Half of web users have illegally downloaded

Almost half of web users have used illegal file sharing sites, with Limewire (34 per cent) and BitTorrent (25 per cent) the most popular, according to research from Tiscali. In a survey of over 1,000 consumers, 46 per cent have used a peer-to-peer site (P2P), but 53 per cent have never knowingly downloaded music illegally, […]

February 25, 2009

Major US cablecos want networks online

Comcast and Time Warner Cable are talking with owners of the major cable television channels about ways to give subscribers online access to much of the their programming. Discussions have taken place in recent months and include network owners such as NBC Universal, and cable networks as MTV, TNT. The operators hope the Web services, […]

February 25, 2009

Positive results for Telenet

Shares in Belgian cable company Telenet rose 5 per cent high after the group reported 2008 earnings above market expectations and forecasts strong growth in 2009. Telenet ended 2008 with 609,000 digital TV homes, The total number of its cable TV homes, both analogue and digital, hit 2,402,000 thanks in part to the acquisition of […]

February 25, 2009

Virgin content on block again?

Virgin Media is expected to begin the sale of its content division within weeks hoping to raise £500m (E567m). The sale would include Virgin’s 50% stake in UKTV the JV with the BBC. Analysts have speculated Virgin will try again to sell non-core assets as it seeks to pay down debt. Interested parties are thought […]

February 25, 2009