Ticketmaster and Live Nation, the two US businesses that dominate live events both in the US and in other parts of the world, issued a fairly lame statement to the UK Competition Commission this week saying that their merger, was in the public interest and they looked forward to chatting with the Commission about remedies. Meanwhile very few people agree with them. The UK Competition Commission has already said that one of the UK operations would have to be sold off, and there have been calls to block the merger from outraged artists and management companies. The two are said to be holed up with the US Justice Department, trading concessions on just how to get the deal through. Our call is that this deal is unlikely to go ahead. When we looked at it in July it seemed certain that live event pricing is going to go through the roof regardless of what happens to this merger.
The US standard for mobile broadcast TV called ATSC M/H (technically the ATSC Mobile DTV), an extension to US broadcast TV, has gone through to being a standard at a vote last week, overwhelmingly, despite naysaysers claiming there were issues still to be resolved. The work was fast-tracked, but still took a few years from start to finish, but digital exciters are already in place or being put in at 70 TV stations, to all come onstream this year and early next (there are about 30 so far). All we need now is for someone to release handsets and cellcos to get involved. Still a long way to go, but the rise and rise of netbooks is apparently gaining interest here.
The BBC and broadcast transmission group Arqiva have cut a deal to upgrade part of the UK’s transmitter network to DVB-T2, as part of Ofcom’s plan to make room for a HDTV Multiplex. HD transmissions will begin from the Winter Hill transmitter serving North West Britain on 1 December. DVB-T2 will then roll out in each region as the analog switch-off proceeds (right up to 2012). A small network of five additional transmitters will bring HD services to key metropolitan areas ahead of their planned switchover dates, including London from the end of 2009, and in Glasgow, Newcastle, Birmingham and Leeds in Spring 2010. Compatible devices should be out in early 2010.
Taiwan is one of the last remaining hopes for a mobile TV license for MediaFLO and that was boosted this week when the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) issued a draft proposal to the release two national mobile TV operating licenses in 2010, according to the Chinese Economic Daily News. There are existing trials for DVB-H and for MediaFLO from opposing groups and it could happen that both technologies are implemented. Certainly there is enough support in Taiwan to ensure that the spectrum allocations are at least technology neutral. Qualcomm is naturally keen to support one of the bidding groups, but will not want to take on the full financial burden on its own we suspect.
Media buyers are increasingly drawn to online video advertising says UK video advertising network Web TV Enterprise, claiming that media buyers in the UK will increase spending on video advertising by 50% over the coming year, after it quadrupled this year. Web TV Enterprise is currently serving more advertising campaigns and more pre-roll adverts than in any other month previously.
Shares of US patent troll InterDigital crashed 20% after the US International Trade Commission confirmed its judgment that Nokia did not need to pay royalties to the company in order to create 3G handsets. The commission found that Interdigital patents are valid and enforceable, but Nokia’s 3G products don’t infringe them. Taken to its ultimate conclusion many other royalties may go the same way from other handset vendors. InterDigital invented the algorithms which help cellular radios gauge the minimum power on their signal when trying to reach a nearby base station, but they are very generic algorithms, although were accepted as forming part of the GSM patent pools.
The Italian Government will spend €800 million trying to get broadband cheaply to every Italian Citizen in its new Broadband plan, similar to those adopted in France, the UK and being loudly called for in the US. The aim is to put the infrastructure in place so that anyone can get network speeds of at least 2Mbps in any part of Italy. The plan still has to survive a vote and the fleshing out of details.
Sky Italia says that it will roll out a DVB-T dongle to people using its satellite TV service to enable set tops to get digital terrestrial TV channels which have been withdrawn from satellite service through encryption, says Broadband TV news. Sky also said that it would boost HD channels to 30 from 16. Mediaset and RAI channels have recently been encrypted and so are unavailable to Sky Italia households and the miniature tuner will simply pick those channels up from the local terrestrial transmitter instead of a satellite. We’re not entirely sure that’s legal, but we think so, though clearly Mediaset and RAI will be upset by the move.
The BBC cannot offer its iPlayer to other independent TV channels such as Channel 4, ITV and Channel Five ‘freely and openly’ because the BBC Trust which polices the BBC’s role, says it does nothing for license payers. Of course it may now decide to charge a reasonable rate at arms length for the software. Under the title Project Marquee this move was supposed to help UK based broadcasters take their content online but that would be to the detriment of content that is currently not broadcast. The Trust will now look at licensing the iPlayer to a third party and letting it commercialize it.
Norwegian encoder player Appear TV, says that its SC2000 IP Streamer technology has been chosen by Croatian broadband operator Iskon to offer video on its DSL platform. The project, delivered through Verso, a leading Croatian systems integrator, will create a new IPTV service. The SC2000 is described as a head-end in a box and comes with Gigabit capacity and handles all signal processing, from reception to IP streaming, the company says.
That more famous Norwegian firm Opera Software says that it has joined with the cross-industry consortium which is pushing the Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) initiative, to create a hybrid internet DVB-T set top. It will offer its Opera Devices SDK, as a software foundation for the platform. Previously announced members are Canal+, France Televisions and TF1, German research institute Institut f’r Rundfunktechnik, satellite operator SES Astra and a rival software provider in ANT as well as OpenTV.
Second placed German cable TV group Unity Media said this week it is ready to roll out DOCSIS 3.0 services with broadband up at 120 Mbps in the areas of Cologne and Aachen, as part of a new high speed flat-rate triple play offer. Pricing will be set closer to launch which is in November.
The Board of OpenTV has decided not to make a recommendation one way or another on the latest upgraded offer to buy the remainder of the company by controlling shareholder Kudelski Group. ‘The board of directors has made no determination whether the offer is fair, to and in the best interest of the holders of the shares,’ the company said in an SEC filing. Kudelski holds control of the board, but other shareholders may not be quite so restrained, although when the previous offer was criticized the noise was deafening and immediate, so perhaps they are planning to take the marginally improved offer, which still looks like a steal.
Orange in the UK has upgraded all of its new broadband lines to 20 Mbps, presumably meaning that all of the DSLAMs it will attach to are now ADSL2+ compliant, which runs at that speed. The increase in speed will be at the same price as its older, slower services. Orange also said it would update its multimedia offerings and offer unlimited downloads across all price plans. There are also upgrades to VoIP voice services over the lines and lowered pricing tiers, but we’re not sure if existing customers can simple ask for the upgrade for free.
Mobango, a social mobile application store, today said that its community has reached over five million members, who have downloaded 550 million pieces of mobile content so far. The Mobango community is primarily made up of 18-25 and 26-34 demographics and the largest communities are in the US, India, the UK and Italy, with Germany and Spain coming up fast. Mobango’s pitch is that people can share downloadable apps and content with friends, via their phones.
The Wi-Fi Alliance has issued a new specification called Wi-Fi Direct which once implemented will allow smartphones, laptops and other electronics to connect to each other without using a WiFi hotspot.
The new spec should make such connections faster than say Bluetooth and might be used in peer-to-peer gaming or wireless printing. Devices should appear in 2010.
Apple has curiously applied for a patent which talks about synchronizing data across multiple devices based on iPod and iPhone synchronisation and MobileMe style cloud-computing services. Funnily enough the Barnes and Noble ebook reader announced today does the same thing, syncs across multiple devices over multiple networks. Barnes and Noble gave the example of keeping your page and your notes on a story you were reading, while Apple gave the example of remembering where you were in a video you were watching, but the same principle is in action. Apple specifically mentions Apple TV and the iPhone, syncing when they get close enough to one another, something we find very exciting at Faultline because we see set top to mobile device file swaps as highly desirable and disruptive.
According to Telecom Paper the German regulator BNA will auction 360 MHz of mobile spectrum in the second quarter of 2010, and interested parties can apply starting on 21 October 2009 though to 21 January 2010. The auction process is not set yet and will be made public shortly. The auction will include digital switchover 800 MHz spectrum and 1.7 GHz, 1.8 GHz, 2 GHz and 2.6 GHz frequency blocks.