In tandem with publishing its Annual Report for 2016/17, the BBC has disclosed the amounts paid to staff and talent over £150,000 (€170,000) from the licence fee in the last financial year. Under the terms of its new Charter, the BBC is required to publish an annual report for each financial year from the Remuneration […]
Croatia is planning to switch free-to-air terrestrial TV broadcasting from the DVB-T to the DVB-T2 standard in 2019. According to the Croatian Agency for Postal and Electronic Communications (Hakom), the switch to the more efficient DVB-T2 system with H.265/HEVC video encoding is necessary to enable a more economical transmission of HDTV content on terrestrial networks […]
The French-backed ‘4-Ever’ research and development project has come to an end. Its nine core partners include Orange, France Télévisions, Globecast and ATEME, and the focus was very much on 4K/Ultra HD transmission and in particular how UHD could advance with High Dynamic Range (HDR) and higher frame rates. The research project, under the leadership of […]
Egypt’s Competition Authority (ECA) has repeated that Qatar-based beIN Sports cannot operate or deliver its sports transmissions over Egypt. Currently, Egypt is in a diplomatic dispute with Qatar, which has not helped the situation but in fact the problems with beIN Sports go back to the earlier part of the year, and concerns access to […]
UK Internet users will have to prove they are 18 before being allowed to access adult websites from next year, following a new government ruling. Websites will be legally required to install age verification controls come April 2018 as part of a move to make the Internet safer for children. Users may be asked to […]
French telco Altice-SFR has revealed plans to fibre the entire French territory with no public money, which it says will make it possible to achieve the French President and Government’s goal of giving access to high-speed broadband throughout France. Altice-SFR’s contribution to the State’s deployment programme is reflected in the creation of Altice Infrastructures, a […]
In its response to the UK Government’s consultation into public service broadcaster Channel 4’s future, Pact – the UK trade association representing and promoting the commercial interests of independent creative content producers – has called for the broadcaster to up its investment in programmes made in the nations and regions to 50 per cent. This […]
UK comms regulator Ofcom has announced how infrastructure unit Openreach will be held to account, as it becomes legally separate from BT, to ensure it delivers for phone and broadband users. Ofcom expects the reformed Openreach to engage with industry to deliver widespread fibre networks, offering fast, reliable broadband. The new company should provide a […]
SMPTE, the organisation whose standards work has supported a century of advances in entertainment technology, will be working together with the Digital Production Partnership (DPP) on a joint pilot specification project to create an Interoperable Master Format (IMF) specification for broadcast and online. “One of the original DPP core objectives was to achieve a common, […]
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s President and Chief Legal Officer, has announced a strategy utilising so-called TV White Spaces spectrum – unused spectrum in the UHF television bands in the 600 MHz frequency range – to bring broadband to some 23.4 million Americans in rural areas currently unserved. Speaking at a lunch sponsored by the Media Institute […]