Canadian IPTV firm Espial said this week that Sogetel, the largest independent telephone company in Quebec, is getting ready to launch into IPTV using Espial’s Evo TV Service Platform and its MediaBase VoD platform. It will initially launch to 1,000 customers, with SD and HD programming VoD services and time shifted TV, presumably using server side nPVR. Sogetel has 32,000 access lines in five different rural areas of Quebec.
The Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) this week said it would work with the Broadband Forum on the development of standards and specifications for broadband networks. The result will be an acceleration and an alignment of key specification work within the industry centred on quality of service (QoS), software modularity, IPv6, energy efficiency and testing.
Tomorrow Kudelski’s tender offer for the OpenTV shares it doesn’t hold, will expire. Very few shares had been tendered last week, and this week Kudelski put out a statement saying it planned to spend $100 to $150 million of the company’s money (OpenTV’s) whether the deal went ahead or not. Ostensibly this is to ensure OpenTV’s sustainability, but it looks more like a threat to us. It also listed what it called severe challenges for OpenTV saying that business from top 20 customers is declining, pointing out that the recent renewal of a deal with BSkyB moved OpenTV from being the de facto software supplier, to a technology license only and warns this will happen with other News Corp pay TV players. At this rate the deal is STILL not going to happen.
Reports from The New York Times and Reuters are insisting that Comcast and General Electric executives are getting closer to reaching terms under which Comcast will acquire a 51% controlling stake in a joint venture involving NBC Universal, which values the GE holding in the joint venture at $30 billion. While the New York Times reckons this will have a rough ride getting through regulators, we cannot see where the problems would lie. News Corp owned both Fox and DirecTV in the past, which was probably more powerful in terms of viewing hours and reach among US citizens.
Verizon Wireless duly launched the Droid in the US, without any of the queues that perhaps it was hoping for, but US sources say it managed to ship 100,000 devices in the first weekend of its release, from a stock holding of 200,000. Motorola hopes to sell 1 million in the coming quarter and 10 million in 2010.
US WiMAX broadband network Clearwire said it will get a new funding injection of $1.564 billion from its current investors and that $1.176 billion of that will come from Sprint Nextel. This money is needed to keep the build out speed up for now, and will probably need yet more money to complete its aggressive 2010 deployment schedule. Clearwire said at its quarterly results that its CLEAR network signed up 49,000 net subscriber additions and total WiMAX subscribers reached 173,000. Including pre-WiMAX customers it now has 555,000 subscribers.
The Bertelsmann Group’s Q3 grew operating income by 14% to €284 million on revenues that declined by 4.5% to €3.6 billion Net income was €87 million compared to €15 million last year.
Vodafone dismayed wireless equipment players by announcing yet another £1 billion round of cuts that the company is planning to make. over the next two years, the second in two years, in order to boost profitability. The biggest cellular operator in the world by revenue revealed in its half year figures, that it lost 3% in revenue terms organically, but due to the weaker British pound which it reports in, shows revenues of £21.8 billion up 9.3%. Vodafone only shows operating profit in its half year results which was up 2.4% to £5.9 billion, and it generated £4 billion of cash, up 29.1%, before licence and spectrum payments. Its strongest performers were Africa and Central Europe where revenue grew 35.9% including its Vodacom acquisition, and in Asia Pacific and Middle East, where it had revenue growth of 15.9% reflecting its performance in India.
Google says that it will foot the bill for wi-fi access at ALL major US airports between now and January 15 next year calling it a ‘gift’ to travelers. The service will be available in 47 airports, which will make it available for up to 100 million people in that time. Google will ask for donations to three charities for anyone using it, Engineers Without Borders, the One Economy Corporation and the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. Google says it will match the donations made across all the networks up to $250,000.
Advertising Age magazine in the US said this week that Verizon Wireless will conduct a $100 million advertising campaign, the largest in Verizon history, most of it spent before the end of the year. The Droid is touted as the robotic do it all antidote to the iPhone, which of course is rubbish, that’s why so many people like the iPhone and pay so much for it. The advertising is seen as a way of stemming the desertions to AT&T.
Long Island based Cablevision says that it is ahead of schedule and around 15% under budget in its build out of a footprint wide wi-fi network. Cablevision sees this free wi-fi network as vital to keep its customers, who may have similar offers from Verizon. The Cablevision bill for the work was supposed to be $300 million so we presume that this is now $255 million. All the other cablcos in the US opted for adding mobility instead, but a little bird tells us that there are RFPs now coming out from all the other cable operators to build similar wi-fi networks.
US tuner designer in broadcasting and cable markets, MaxLinear has filed a registration statement with the US SEC to go public but has yet to say just how much money it will raise, the number of share that it will commit to sell and at what price.
Only in the UK – The UK Government is moving forward with a plan which will require all telecoms and internet service providers to keep a record of every customer’s personal communications showing each website visited, who they have contacted and been contacted by, including storing details of every phone call and personal email. This content can then be perused by 653 official bodies who can access details of internet addresses, dates, times and identity of recipients. It has already been publicly shown that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), has been used to investigate dog fouling and school catchment fraudsters when it was set up purely for anti-terrorism.
Motorola’s Home & Networks Mobility business said this week that it will provide the Farmers Telephone Cooperative in the US with its VIP1200 Series of IPTV set tops and will integrate it with Microsoft’s Mediaroom video services platform. Farmers Telephone Cooperative is based in South Carolina and provides telephone, video, data and cellular services to a 3,000 square mile area.