This weeks round up of OTT Video news, deals, launches and products from Faultline.
Global satellite services provider O3b has signed an agreement with Speedcast to provide improved connectivity to the 100,000 residents living on the islands of Kiribati in the Central Pacific. Speedcast provides very small aperture terminal (VSAT) satellite-based broadband access services, and will provide connectivity to consumers, businesses and government customers over the O3b satellite network. Kiribati’s remote location means laying undersea fiber cables would be unnecessarily expensive and time-consuming. O3b’s MEO satellites orbit at 8,062km and have a latency of less than 150 msec – 25% that of GEO satellites.
Orange’s FilmBox Live VoD app is now available to mobile customers in Poland on any device connected to the internet, with zero data transfer charges. FilmBox Live and Orange’s other on-demand platform Telewizja Tu i Tam (TV Here and There), are currently the only on-demand services integrated into the Orange platform in Poland. FilmBox Live offers live streams of national channels, and movies and series on-demand. Orange TV says it can reach of 7.5 million households in Poland.
The FCC has put forward a proposal to modernize its Lifeline program, which aims to help low income families in the USA gain access to broadband services by setting minimum service standards. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler published a blog post this week, stating that more than 64 million Americans are without access to the internet – 20% of the entire population. Cost is the main factor for this, 43% who don’t subscribe to broadband say they can’t afford it. The FCC’s figures also claim that of the low income consumers who have subscribed to broadband, 44% have had to cancel or suspend their service due to financial reasons.
Pay TV provider to the Middle East and North Africa OSN, has announced it is ramping up capacity on Eutelsat’s 8 West B satellite. The expansion will allow OSN to provide more HD channels and begin the introduction of UHD channels.
Internet service provider United Internet will acquire more shares in cable operator Tele Columbus, following approval from the federal German anti-trust authority Bundeskartellamt. This now makes United Internet the largest shareholder with 25.11%, but has not yet received clearance for a full takeover. “This decision has no legal binding effect on the question whether a possible further increase of the shareholding would be permitted under anti-trust law,” said a cartel office spokesman.
Bolivian telco Entel Bolivia has selected the Jupiter System from Hughes Network Systems. The Jupiter System, as well as 550 terminals, will serve as a platform for new high-availability satellite broadband network across the country, to extend cellular and internet access to isolated areas. The services will operate in the Ku-band satellite spectrum over the Túpac Katari 1 satellite.
Market ratings firms Regional TAM, OzTAM and Nielsen have published the Australian Multi-Screen Report for Q4 2015. It finds that across all screens and all types of video content, 84.5% of viewing occurs on TVs. It also says that Australians played an average of 112 minutes per week of broadcasters’ Internet delivered TV content – which is only around 1% of broadcast TV viewing in the period.
Gaming platform GamerFame has launched its website this week, which allows gamers to go head-to-head in online challenges for real money. GamerFame currently supports around 30 of the most popular competitive games, and is developing a mobile app. This sounds like it could be recipe for disaster, but GamerFame says that in the event of any dubious outcomes, it captures Twitch footage for review.
Over 2 million customers have joined AT&T’s unlimited data plan, just 2 months after launch, according to AT&T CFO John Stephens. The plan costs $100 per month with unlimited data to users who are also subscribed to DirecTV. Stephens said this is part of the company’s plans to offer discounted bundles to those subscribed to multiple product offerings.
Time Warner Cable’s advertising sales arm, Time Warner Cable Media, has expanded its Ads Everywhere capabilities to deliver ad campaigns to households in live and on-demand, across a reported 10.8 million digital video households. This allows for targeted dynamic ad insertion during live TV, VoD, and on the TWC TV app on multiple devices.
US media company Viacom has launched Vantage Target Discovery and Vantage Instant Audience, to boost its data-driven predictive and targeting engine Viacom Vantage for targeted advertising. These product launches come after Viacom recently formed a partnership with Snapchat, which appointed Viacom as an ad sales partner.
Video compression firm V-Nova has released an SDK for its Perseus system, to allow integration into third party encoders and video players. The newly launched SDK supports HD streaming over mobile networks, in the form of an encoder plug in (EPI) and decoder plug in (DPI). The Perseus plug ins support Intel x86-based encoders, and iOS and Android devices.
Satellite DTH service TV d’Orange will be moving its services from the Eutelsat 5WA and Hotbird satellites from May to December 2016, in a move to optimize its infrastructure. It is advising customers to redirect satellite dishes to the Astra position of 19.2 degrees East, resulting in a loss of certain channels.
Following its launch 11 months ago, HBO Now has almost reached 1 million subscribers, according to Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes. The SVoD service had racked up 800,000 subs at the end of 2015. HBO also added 2.7 million US cable, satellite and telco customers last year. Bewkes added that HBO is looking to ramp up its original content offering.
Vubiquity has been chosen by OTT streaming service FlixFling to provide its AnyVU Content Cloud platform, a library of movies and TV content that it says facilitates management, automation, and delivery of content for any screen. FlixFling offers pay as you go and subscription services.
Satellite transmission technology company NovelSat has partnered with XipLink to integrate XipLink’s wireless link optimization technology into NovelSat’s modem hardware. The two companies say this will offer satellite communications customers higher data throughput and a better user experience.
RR Media has teamed up with French broadcast facilities provider WTS Live to provide broadcasters, content owners, news companies, and sports rights agencies an offering of digital media services in the run up to the UEFA Euro 2016 tournament in France. Elad Manishviz, CMO at RR Media, said, “2016 is set to be an exciting sporting year with the upcoming Euro tournament in France and the Rio 2016 Olympics in Brazil. We’ve made it a priority to serve our global customers with the broadest selection of digital media services, enabling them to engage their viewers everywhere with thrilling content, including live video and sporting highlights.”
OTT video delivery solution provider Erstream has announced the integration of NexGuard forensic watermarking. Erstream says its platform for live and on-demand includes multi-bitrate encoding, CDN delivery, edge storage, ingest, and content management solutions, operating mainly in the MENA region.
Comcast has acquired sports technology and data startup OneTwoSee, for an undisclosed amount. Comcast says this will be a big boost for X1’s sports offering, and says it has also worked with OneTwoSee in the past year to reengineer its X1 sports app – initially launched with the platform to help fans check scores, standings, and schedules for games – into a more interactive experience.
Indian content provider The Viral Fever has selected Brightcove’s Video Cloud to power its TVFPlay OTT entertainment channel. TVFPlay offers original webisodes, satirical content, and curated global TV shows, and is aimed at India’s millennial audience, which represent 75% of the country’s 400 million internet users, mostly connected via phone connections.
Google is scrapping its invite-only policy and has decided to open up its Project Fi MVNO program to all. Project Fi accesses the LTE networks of both Sprint and T-Mobile, enabling users to switch between the two carriers dynamically depending on coverage. Google offers a “Fi Basics” plan for $20 a month; additional data is available for $10 per GB. Project Fi works only with Nexus phones.