SES Americom says that it has signed up 65 telcos in 31 states for its IP Prime wholesale IPTV platform, which brings an IPTV ready stream down from a satellite and takes away the need for a head end. Each company has either adopted IP Prime as it is with 200 standard definition and 50 HD channels or as an exclusive HD solution installed on top of existing IPTV operations. It says that so far only 24 are delivering to customers already and the rest have yet to come online. So no recession for SES then.
Word has it that Arun Sarin, the ex-Vodafone CEO, is in line for the Yahoo CEO job vacated by Yahoo founder Jerry Yang. It would be familiar territory for Sarin, surrounded by investors that think they know better than the management, and who want the company to sell out to Microsoft tomorrow, if not sooner (at Vodafone it was always selling the 45% stake in Verizon Wireless, but much the same). But if Sarin really does take the helm and decides not to sell, then he is just the man to steer Yahoo into dominance on handsets.
Wired.com has revealed that Choruss, a company set up by the digital strategist at Warner Music, has already signed up 3 of the four leading record labels (EMI, Warner Music and Sony-BMG). Its role is to act as a central point to collect levies from Universities so that students would have rights to free music throughout their stay at college. The hold out is Universal Music which has always had a tendency to go its own way being the largest, but also the four largest labels always have to be careful they don’t cut out the independents and get accused of anti-trust.
According to Satkurier the new Polish DTH satellite TV market is growing at an incredible speed signing up to 20,000 new subscribers each day. Cyfra+ accounts for half of the total (10,000), with the remainder split evenly between Cyfrowy Polsat and TNK. The Cyfra+ campaign had gone has high as 14,000 a day recently.
AT&T has been saying for a long time that it will hit 1 million U-Verse IPTV subscribers before the end of the year, and says that it is passing that landmark about now. AT&T told a UBS investor conference that U-Verse has achieved a 10% penetration whenever it has been in a market for one year. Given that U-Verse currently passes 17 million homes that puts it on track to reach far higher figures this year. AT&T says that 54% of TV customers were not DSL subscribers previously, which is increasing ARPU as it signs them up for broadband as well.
European online P2P video company Babelgum has launched an iPhone app just as its direct rival Joost did a few weeks back, with the difference that it can work over a 3G network, not just wi-fi. Most content is available on handsets, except a few items that Babelgum does not have phone rights to. The company says it plans to concentrate on pushing short-form content of 30 seconds to five minutes.
Korea Telecom has gone to Tandberg Television, part of the Ericsson Group for an IPTV head end upgrade to support its Mega TV IPTV service. Mega TV has over 700,000 subscribers and provides interactive and pay per view services, including VoD films. Regulatory changes in Korea mean IPTV providers are now allowed to offer broadcast services to complement their existing VoD.
Nokia and Research In Motion have renewed their multi-year patent license agreement covering the use of GSM, WCDMA and CDMA2000 technologies. The financial terms of the agreement consist of an up-front payment and on-going royalties payable to Nokia.
Infogrames Entertainment which is now the parent of Atari, has announced it is acquiring Cryptic Studios, a developer which builds massively multiplayer games such as City of Heroes and City of Villains. Infogrames will acquire all of Cryptic’s tools, technology and intellectual properties including Champions Online which will be released in 2009, Star Trek Online which will be released in 2010, and an as yet unannounced third title. Cryptic has 150 staff and did $17 million in its last financial year.
Mobile TV chip maker DiBcom, has supplied chips for the CANAL+ KEY, a USB key-sized Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) HD decoder which will slot into a PC. The TV decoder offers French subscribers the chance to receive CANAL+ TV channels including premium and HD channels.