France Telecom remained the leading IPTV service in the world up 83% over this time last year to 1.4 million IPTV customers, 1.3 million of them in France, on surging broadband lines up to 12 million with 7.6 million in its native France, which only goes to show that it has the potential to drive IPTV in the UK and Spain especially, where the rest of those broadband lines are. VoIP customers also reached 5.4 million, with 4.6 million of those in France.
Tiny Estonia with just 1.3 million people, has managed to launch its own DVB-H trial through Levira the national transmission company in the capital city, Tallinn. It offers 7 channels free of charge and will last until the end of the year. Naturally Levira is partially owned by France’s TDF, which seems to have a Europe wide monopoly in transmitting most live DVB-H services including trials in France, and services in Germany and Finland.
New York cable company Cablevision is expected to acquire the Sundance Channel, currently owned by NBC Universal, CBS, and the actor Robert Redford. The deal will cost around $500 million and strengthen its own film interests which already include IFC, a widely distributed film channel.
Israeli conditional access leader NDS said this week that Tata Sky, operating for just 20 months as a DTH supplier in India, has already signed 2 million subscribers. NDS provides VideoGuard conditional access, its MediaHighway middleware, its own EPG and its Value interactive infrastructure. In a separate announcement NDS said that in the US cableco Cox has chosen its next generation user interface software. The new UI will be forward compatible with Tru2way (OpenCable) devices and include VOD, EPG, DVR and interactive applications.
UK record label EMI is now expected to lay off 1,000 more workers than it originally estimated, according to public statements made by Guy Hands, the CEO of its new owner, private equity group Terra Firma. EMI directors were told to bring headcount to 2,000 people down from the 4,500 the company inherited acquisition. In January the firm announced 1,500 cuts. Hands wants to reach the same revenue per employee level as rival operations in France and the US.
Telefonica has decided to sell off its 16.8% stake in Sogecable, Spain’s biggest TV group and the owner of DTH service Digital Plus. The deal will bring in €650 million and will go to existing dominant shareholder Prisa Holdings which will now own 95%. Telefonica has had lots of dealings in the past with Sogecable, which owns 23 TV channels as well as Digital Plus and Canal Plus in Spain, which between them have 2 million subscribers. Teleconfica has distributed the Sogecable offerings over its ADSL lines in triple play bundles. However Sogecable is now to be about to sell Digital Plus and is reported to be back talking to Telefonica, as well as News Corp, Vivendi and Mexican mogul Carlos Slim.
Sony has owned up to not selling quite as many PS3s as it had predicted, reaching 9.24 million. It had originally said it would ship 11 million then revised this to 9.5 million, the figure it has just missed. Still most observers would have been surprised that it did that well, and the PlayStation Portable did even better, just beating Sony estimates of 13 million. Despite this the Sony gaming business remained in the red for the quarter, something that is unlikely to remain the case after the launch of Grand Theft Auto IV a few weeks back, which has shipped a record $500 million of sales in its first week, primarily on Sony Platforms. That revenue will come into the next quarter.
UK set top group Pace, which has just acquired the Philips set top business, has a follow on contract from BT for the set top which drives its BT Vision IPTV hybrid service. Pace will supply second-generation DVRs with access to 40 Freeview TV channels, 30 radio channels, with 80 hours recording capacity. This is the first set top that Pace has made which uses the Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV middleware. It also uses Nagravision conditional access. Deliveries will commence in 2009.
Canada may investigate its own Bell Canada to see if its deep packet inspection and its throttling back of P2P activity on its broadband internet systems are a basis for introducing some form of net neutrality ruling. So ar all that has happened is that the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) has filed an official complaint with Canada’s Privacy Commissioner. Part of the concern is that DPI is getting fast enough so that it can peek at personal data.
HD Platform, Hungary’s first provider of high definition services, with its Hello HD service is using a conditional access system from Noway’s Conax. Hello HD is delivered via both cable and satellite and the system was put together with ADB set tops, Eutelsat satellite delivery, and a Harmonic head end.
After initially rebuffing a takeover, US retailer Circuit City has agreed to let Blockbuster take a long hard look at its books. This act may also pull more suitors out of the closet, but few, we doubt with a better retail fit than Blockbuster, which operates over 6,000 stores compared to Circuit City’s 682, and a combined offering will give the two a huge converged footprint.
Hewlett-Packard, a company that once had ambitions in the Consumer Electronics space, launching 158 products in a single day under its previous CEO, will now acquire outsourcer and services giant EDS. This is much more the right direction for a company that so far has copied every move that IBM has made. The deal will cost $12.6 billion in cash, and make HP a very clear global services second place behind IBM.