Leaks from US cellular operator Verizon Wireless, carried in Engadget, suggest that it is going after the iPad, offering a Mi-Fi device which converts a cellular signal into Wi-Fi, to speak to the new Apple device. Customers could buy the Wi-Fi version of the iPad and use it anywhere in the Verizon footprint. All it has to do is make financiall attractive with a low price offer. The thrust of the argument is that US consumers won’t pay more to get a 3G service on an overloaded network (AT&T’s) with limited coverage, but they might on the slick Verizon network.
It turns out that Dave Labuda one of the people behind Portal Software, which developed the first real time IP charging system, mostly used by ISPs and sold to Oracle in 2006, is back in the real time billing game with start up Matrixx Software, developing a real-time charging and policy management system, targeting a low cost per transaction for wireless devices.
Norwegian content creation and management specialist Vizrt is integrating Civolution’s watermarking system into its Viz Ardome media asset management software. Civolution is a management buyout from Philips and has many of the leading patents in watermarking and uses them in its NexGuard system to trace the source of pirated content.
We usually associate Irdeto with conditional access, but its parent Naspers has amassed a bundle of other related tools and last year some of them were put into the Irdeto side of the business, including its customer care and billing system. This week it has signed up the entire Telenor Group right across Scandinavia for broadband and TV customers. Telenor has been a customer of the system for a while, but is now extending its use in its entire triple play.
Ancient rockers Pink Floyd have decided to sue EMI, their record label, simply because it has started selling its music in individuals tracks, and not in albums when they are sold online. The band argues that many of its tracks flow into one another and that they were never meant to be heard separately.
Project Canvas may have overcome its biggest obstacle by inviting the Digital TV Group to be on its steering committee. This answers a harsh criticism which DTG leveled at it, about the BBC not promising to make Canvas adhere to recommendations it had made. Meanwhile it has formally announced that three set-top box suppliers have been chosen to build the first Canvas devices Cisco Systems, Technicolor (formerly Thomson) and Humax. A further nine set top makers and chip suppliers including ADB, Amino, Broadcom, Echostar, Intel, LG, Sagem, ST Micro and TVonics are also planning to launch devices.
Ketchikan Public Utilities in Alaska has recently implemented Nokia Siemens Networks’ Home Entertainment 3.0, a next-generation IPTV platform, which we think is based on the old Myrio middleware that Siemens acquired in 2005. NSN says Home Entertainment 3.0 offers an open environment which will allow KPU to customize its offerings and encourage third-party developers to create their own rich media and Web 2.0 applications, integrated with IPTV.
Kabel Deutschland will, after all, pretty much as we predicted, not sell itself to any of the bidders that were rumored to be chasing it, and will undergo an IPO on March 19th where it will raise €700 million in return 25% to 30% of the company. The final price will be settled later this week and we assume the proceeds will go to pay down debt or directly to the shareholdersm, the largest of which is Providence Equity Partners.
A legal opinion from lawyers Denton Wilde Sapte, says that unless there is a dramatic overnight change in position, Ofcom is likely to force BSkyB to sell channels on a wholesale basis directly to its rivals. Alex Haffner, competition specialist at the law firm says that Ofcom is about to complete its three years investigation into the UK pay TV market. Sky could be forced to sell its key sports and film channels on a wholesale basis to rival pay-TV platform operators at a regulated price. Sky will of course appeal.
Swiss conditional access company Nagravision, said that Brazilian TV network, Rede Globo has selected Nagravision for its Digital Television for Rural Areas project. The project includes the industry’s first geo-control technology and will replace millions of analogue receivers for high definition (HD) ready set-top boxes. Programming from different Globo affiliated television stations carried on the same satellite will allow the company to provide viewers with more localized content for each region and to support advertising from local sponsors.
Sky Deutschland plans to follow its UK cousin and offer a live 3D transmission of the Bundesliga German soccer games. First it will show one game on March 14 between Bayer Leverkusen and Hamburger SV. It will be shown to an invited audience in Munich to give early insight into how the 3D HD experience will develop.
Baolab Microsystems in Spain says that it has a new technology which will slash the costs of building nanoscale Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) which are used to build sensors, actuators and low power displays, by etching the components directly onto CMOS chips. The process uses standard mask techniques and etching equipment already available for volume production and takes less than an hour. Baolab reckons this will change costs by an order of magnitude and will use it to make a range RF switches, electronic compasses and accelerometers later this year.
Italian IPTV operator Fastweb has now formally denied any involvement in a €300 million tax fraud and money laundering scam which saw its founder arrested last week. It is offering to surrender control of its wholesale business to an independent overseer rather than let the court take over the entire company, Reuters said.