South Africa’s media regulator Icasa says that despite objections from dominant incumbent pay-TV operator MultiChoice, it will open up the pay-TV market in the country. Icasa held hearings during May into the nation’s pay-TV services, and ICASA is known to want to ease the entry of rival operators to MultiChoice. Icasa spokesman Paseka Maleka says […]
Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal has lost another arbitration award brought by Lebanon’s LBC International, and its chairman Pierre el Daher. Beirut-based LBCI has been the subject of multiple owners over the past few years, and the allegations concern Al-Waleed’s stewardship of the broadcaster, and which resulted in the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris […]
The DTT migration to release the 700 MHz band for 5G services in Spain will be completed by March 2020, some 3 months before the EU deadline of June 30th. The Spanish government has approved a DTT plan to reorder the frequencies by that time which includes compensations and financial aids to broadcasters and users. […]
Digital platform security specialist Irdeto has detected 5,088 unique illegal streams redistributing games over the Internet during the group stage of the 2018 World Cup. The bookies’ favourites, Brazil won the unwanted moniker of most-pirated team, with more than 582 illegal streams detected for its three group stage matches. Brazil was followed by Morocco (561 […]
BBC Director General Tony Hall has been elected as the new President of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). Delphine Ernotte Cunci, Chief Executive Officer of France Télévisions, will serve as Vice-President. Both were elected by absolute majority at the EBU’s 80th General Assembly in Tirana and will take up the new roles from January 1st […]
A senior executive at Samsung’s Visual Display business says it’s time to start establishing common standards for 8K broadcasting. Currently, it is only Japan that’s making the running in 8K transmissions although plenty of content-producers are making 8K programming, mainly in the natural history and documentary areas. Japan will start full 8K broadcasts on December […]
At last night’s Media Summit Brexit Briefing there were a number of estimates on how likely it was a deal would be negotiated so that UK based international broadcasters could confidently plan to stay. Unfortunately, by far the most optimistic guess was 80 per cent likely and, as several pointed out, 80 per cent certainty […]
Italy’s Communications Authority (AgCom) has approved the new National Frequency Allocation Plan (PNAF 2018). The Plan provides for 15 new digital terrestrial networks in DVB-T2 technology, divided as follows: 10 national networks in the UHF band, four local networks in the UHF band and a regional network in the III VHF band, which will broadcast […]
Grupo de Antipirateria of the Policia Nacional in Spain, led by Inspector Marlene Álvarez Vicente, has become the inaugural winner of an award from the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA) for a successful initiative to tackle audiovisual piracy. The award, presented at this year’s Europol Intellectual Property Crime conference in Budapest, recognised the Grupo de Antipirateria’s […]
As the path towards 5G begins to gain momentum, the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance has today set out its vision for a 5G future and the opportunities and challenges that will arise from deploying it. On the opening day of CommunicAsia – one of the most established telecommunications events – DSA President Kalpak Gude highlighted the […]