Japanese transmission rules forbid public broadcaster NHK from simultaneous streaming of its programmes online. However, on March 5th, Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe approved a new law which will now allow NHK to stream its content. The rules were designed to protect Japan’s private TV networks and cable systems. The only exceptions were natural disasters […]
French Minister for the Economy and Finances, Bruno Le Maire, has presented his proposal to tax tech giants in the Council of Ministers. It would introduce a 3 per cent tax on digital services and will be retroactive to January 2019. The French tax will be applied to all tech companies whose worldwide revenues exceed […]
Unofficially SES is trying to calm investor expectations on the extremely important prospects for some C-band restructuring over the US. The logic is sensible given that a negative Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decision will probably not do its share price a lot of good. On March 5th, SES shares tumbled a worrying 9.16 per cent […]
A TV commercial for Sky’s broadband service has been banned after complaints from rivals BT and Virgin were upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The duo argued it made misleading claims about the company’s ability to boost home Wi-Fi networks. The advert, which featured characters from Disney movie The Incredibles 2, showed a Sky […]
Formula One’s Chairman and CEO, Chase Carey, has suggested that the forthcoming season will mark the true commercial launch of its OTT service. Speaking on the Liberty Media Corp Q4 2018 Earnings Conference Call, Carey said: “With respect to our F1 TV over the top platform, 2019 will, in many ways, be a true commercial […]
UK media regulator Ofcom has detailed the scope of its review of the BBC’s news and current affairs output, which it announced in 2018. The review will assess how well the BBC is adapting to meet the challenges of an increasingly complex news landscape, and its role as a trusted destination for audiences. It will […]
France’s electronic communications Arcep is publishing has published its scoreboard for the fixed broadband and superfast broadband market (rollouts and subscriptions) in France as of the end of December 2018. This quarter confirms the ongoing progress in FTTH subscription numbers and rollouts. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Annual growth in the number of superfast access subscriptions reaches two million, […]
Broadband Forum has completed and published the second code release of its Open Broadband – Broadband Access Abstraction (OB-BAA) project. Release 2.0 of OB-BAA builds on the functionalities enabled by Releases 1.0 and 1.1, which were demonstrated to wide-acclaim at Broadband World Forum last October. Taking accelerated migration to cloud-based access networks to the next […]
YouTube has confirmed it will switch off comments on almost all videos featuring under-18s, in an attempt to “better protect children and families”. A number of brands stopped advertising on YouTube after discovering that paedophiles and groomers were leaving predatory comments on videos featuring children. The Google-owned platform had originally disabled comments on videos that […]
A 10-year battle between two Middle East media giants has resulted in victory for LBC International’s Pierre El Daher against billionaire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal and others. Beirut Judge Fatima Al-Jouni ruled to drop all charges against LBCI chairman Pierre Daher while calling on his rivals to incur all legal fees. It is just the […]