Fastweb founder Silvio Scaglia was arrested and landed in prison after the Italian authorities accused him and his ex-company (now owned by Swisscom) of laundering $ billions. He denies the charges and an Italian judge has given him 48-hours to prepare a defense before moving to put Fastweb into the hands of a court-appointed commissioner. He is one of 56 people that the investigation has pointed a finger at. Scaglia’s defense says it’s ridiculous to expect him to know about every financial transaction the company did. Scaglia will remain in prison until the judge can hear a request for his release from lawyers. Shares in Fastweb, as you can understand, have been violently up and down on the news.
US cableco Cablevision has said at its quarterly results that the long awaited and heavily litigated against plan to use remote storage DVRs, will go into action in April. The use of the devices had to survive legal actions all the way to the when the Supreme Court declined to hear it, after copyright actions from Hollywood studios. It will stop buying stand alone DVRs immediately, the company said, as it reported quarterly figures which showed total subscribers numbers down slightly.
TiVo this week announced its TiVo Premiere and TiVo Premiere XL boxes which give access to cable programming, movies, web videos, and music all in one box, the company said, clearly planning to support US over the top strategies as the set top of choice. It comes with a new GUI which uses pictures and graphics it said. The company reckons you can use it for cable TV (with a cablecard), as a movie set top, a web video device and for music storage and playout. The company says it has significantly reduced the number of screens you will have to deal with to find any piece of content. It comes in two version, one with 320 GB and one with 1 TB, costing $300 and $500 respectively. The company also announced entry into Wi-Fi adaptors and a new Qwerty remote control for full TV search.
UK RF chip specialist Mirics has partner with Hong Kong-based USmart Electronic to offers its FlexTV, which picks up almost any form of TV on a Netbook computer using one RF chip and supporting multiple TV formats in software. Product from the two will be timed to target fans following the 2010 FIFA World Cup on TV in Europe, Asia and South America, regions widely served by the DVB-T and ISDB-T digital TV standards.
The IT market is getting healthier according to the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO), which says it will grow by 1.9% to 2.3 trillion euros in 2010. In 2009, IT sales fell by 1.6%. ‘In the industrial countries, increasingly companies are investing again in modern IT systems,’ the company said, but added that the drivers of growth are the emerging countries of China, India and Brazil.
MobiTV said that its subscription services have experienced a 49% increase in daily viewing minutes over a year ago. The most recent example was the Tiger Woods press conference, which was singly responsible for a 3 times jump in MobiTV viewing on channels airing the event. The company said ‘Breaking news, sports and other live events are proven catalysts for usage spikes.’
The European Commission has pushed through a law forcing Cellcos to design into their mobile broadband systems methods for telling customers how much they have spent on mobile Internet use while roaming. This means operators must pre-agree a point at which mobile Internet access is cut-off for customers when they are traveling in Europe to avoid ‘bill shock’. €50 is the recommended limit.
Technicolor (nee Thomson) says that it has installed the first of its systems for showing 3D films in Cinemas which don’t rely on upgrading to a digital projector. It said it would install the system on 25 of the 150 screens run by New York-based Bow Tie Cinemas, enabling each of its 18 locations to have at least one 3-D screen. Technicolor’s system costs around $4,000 to $6,000 using a new silver screen, and another $12,000 in annual lens rentals. A full digital projection systems would set cinemas back around $75,000 per screen.
US encoder company Harmonic said this week that OSN (Orbit Showtime Network), the leading direct-to-home (DTH) satellite provider serving the Middle East, has deployed a digital headend for its new HD video service, the first H.264 HD service being delivered to multiple countries in the region. It uses the Harmonic Electra 8000 multi-channel universal encoder.
US researcher In-Stat says that mobile VoIP users will approach 300 million by 2013. Not surprising given that Nokia just endorsed Skype on its smartphones. Well over half VoIP users will be associated with online mobile VoIP providers, under one-third will utilize mobile VoIP with 3G MVNOs or mobile operators, and 11% with WiMAX/LTE operators. On a geographic basis, mobile VoIP will be heavily biased towards the Asia Pacific region, particularly among the online mobile VoIP services.
Deutsche Telekom has introduced new packages for its IPTV service T-Home Entertain from April, offering Entertain Comfort costing €44.95 a month, and Entertain Premium at €49.95. Both packages offer flat rate calls in Germany, high-speed DSL, plus 70 TV channels, and time-shift TV, VOD and remote recording via mobile or PC. Deutsche Telekom had 800,000 customers for its IPTV service at the end of 2009.