The New York Times says that GE has reached an agreement with Vivendi to buy its remaining 20% stake in NBC Universal for $5.8 billion. The entire idea is to them merge the business into a single studio and content business with Comcast’s existing TV channels, which Comcast would run and control. Comcast signaled that it wanted to be in the content business when it mounted a failed bid to buy Disney five years ago.
The UK free to air satellite service Freesat continues to resonate with UK consumers, and it has now reached 750,000 homes and is on target to hit one million during the first quarter of 2010. Freesat shipped 200,000 set tops during the last quarter, and it remains the fastest growing TV service in the Europe. France and Italy already have similar free to air satellite operations. Freesat only launched last Spring and already 80% of Freesat sales are for HD equipment and in early 2010 Freesat equipment will be able to run the iPlayer and ITV Player, to view catch up TV delivered over the internet.
In the US online retailers and all the economists have heaved a big sigh of relief as comScore reported that Cyber Monday, a traditionally huge online trading day at the end of the Thanksgiving celebrations there, is almost a record, and anyway way up on last year, bringing in $595 million in Web transactions. Part of this is the increased sophistication of marketing for Cyber Monday, some of it is a switch from retail to online, but also it is a strong indicator that the US economy is recovering.
The US NTIA has once more delayed the issue of the $billions it has for broadband stimulus grants and loans, because there are so many applications and they are so complex, so there is too much data to review. It will now start saying who gets the awards later in December, and actually paying the money in February. There were 2,200 applications asking for $28 billion when only $4 billion is available in the first round.
NDS said this week it has developed a bookable promotions service in Asia, for Foxtel so that viewers can book a recording of a program by pressing the remote’s green button when a trailer plays, whether it is a single program an entire series or a movie. The interactive feature can also be used to give viewers more details about an advert and is an extension to the NDS XTV DVR technology.
The Open IPTV Forum has added PCCW and Allion to its ranks taking Forum membership to 60. PCCW is Hong Kong’s leading telco and one of the world’s best and earliest exponents of IPTV and quad play, while Allion Test Labs is a Taiwanese testing services for computers, mobile devices, digital products and consumer electronics.
While this week the BBC revealed record numbers for viewing on the BBC iPlayer, by comparison with the US Hulu, it showed relatively low numbers. Hulu reached 856 million program views in October and the average Hulu viewer watched 20.1 videos, adding up to two hours of videos according to online audience measurement firm comScore. The BBC managed just 79 million video requests in October less than 10% of Hulu’s number.
So we say goodbye to Viviane Reding as the telecoms and digital commissioner at the European Commission, where she has, in our view, done mostly an admirable job. But if we had to name a replacement then Neelie Kroes, who has been running things over at the competition commission, would have been our choice, which is just as well, as she is now being lined up for the job.
Telefonica has bought a 21% stake in TV content company Sogecable, also the owner of broadcast operator Digital+, from Prisa, paying €470 million. We’re not quite sure of the wisdom of allowing the incumbent telco and IPTV leader and the largest TV channel creator to get too close, especially as it is already distributed by rival cable and DTH satellite. It makes it look like there is no competition in Spain in TV. The European Commission may have something to say about this. In 2007 Telefonica cut a deal for Sogecable programs to go on its IPTV service at a time when it was in trouble with the European Commission for overcharging for ADSL connections.
US WiMAX broadband supplier Clearwire has landed another $920 million of funding in the form of 12 % notes due 2015, which is on top of a previous $1.85 billion round of debt and $1.56 billion of fresh equity. Loudly voiced investor concern that Clearwire might not be able to raise the requisite funds to complete its US network, or that it will have to slow down its rate of build out, is now looking wide of the mark and the US WILL have a national 4G network, most of it during 2010. Mobile WiMAX devices next.
Swiss conditional access supplier Nagravision has signed a license agreement with Neotion allowing it to make Conditional Access Modules (CAMs) which use the Nagravision Conditional Access system. The first fully certified Neotion’s CAMs will be available in the first half of 2010. Neotion will integrate its NKE-1 V2 series processor with the CA system.
Barnes & Noble will now delay its new Nook eReader until it has delivered all of its pre-ordered devices. The $259 eReader will go to its higher volume stores on December 7th, but in limited numbers.
Giesecke & Devrient has acquired Nokia’s shares in Venyon
Oy one of the leading trusted service managers (TSM) on the mobile near field communication (NFC) market. G&D already owned control. As a TSM, Venyon provides trusted services to provision and manage applications securely over the mobile network.