A web pages jumps up on the Deutsche Telekom web site, under the heading of ‘a powerful internet for all,’ defending its new broadband capping policies, and introducing what looks like a way around the Network Neutrality laws that the European Commission is intent on introducing in Europe. The move comes to amend an earlier position DT took, when it throttled back broadband over the cap to just 384 Kbps. It now falls back to 2 Mbps the message says. DT argues that it has invested €6 billion in broadband infrastructure and says these caps will be in place until 2016, and then adjusted. Depending on the plan they are 75 GB, 200 GB, 300 GB and 400 GB. DT has also told service players that they can pay for their content to be delivered and will then not contribute to the cap, but do not give pricing indicators. DT has also provided a volume data calculator for consumers. The operations that may be most affected are LoveFiLM and maxdome, the leading OTT services in Germany currently.
An upstart Azerbaijan TV outfit called ATV, has harnessed innovative Danish IP technology to deliver its TV signal over the internet, instead of just broadcasting it. The deal has come through nearby Turkish media services provider Erstream and is built using the Octoshape Infinite HD-M federated multicast platform and it insists that the video will be able to be seen, at high quality, anywhere in the world from a single server. If it’s right, then this could be the new paradigm for delivering TV content to ex-patriots of all countries, from servers in the home country. Octoshape claims to have solved the problem of what happens when a multicast stream reaches a unicast part of the internet ‘ usually the video just dies at the border. It has created some new internet protocols and offers video in a UDP wrapper instead of TCP/IP.
Israeli DPI specialist Allot Communications says it has secured orders from three of the world’s top ten telecommunication operators to assist in their LTE network rollouts. Though they are not named, they will use Allot’s Service Gateway to take on the new LTE traffic alongside existing traffic from 3G and even WiFi networks. The Allot Service Gateway delivers analytics for business intelligence to operators, enabling them to make service decisions such as squeezing ABR video stream that threaten to take over all the available spectrum. Allot says the orders are all from
tier one operators, two in Europe and one in the US
Just as we went to press last week Google acquired mobile navigation application firm Waze in a deal worth $1.3bn. WSaze is an Israeli start-up, which marries maps with real-time traffic updates. It sounds to us like TPEG (Traffic Experts Group), versions of which have been in operation in Korea for 8 years and which have just started being pushed within Europe.
UK regulator Ofcom has said that in the quarter to the end of March, the most pay TV complaints were once again targeted at IP delivered hybrid BT Vision. There were 0.29 complaints per 1,000 customers, slightly up on last quarter and they continue to be 6 times what the other major ay TV providers experience, BSkyB and Virgin Media. Most complaints refer to problems with service provision and billing issues. Landline telephone services complaints were led by TalkTalk with 0.39 complaints per 1,000 customers, while broadband services were led by Everything Everywhere at the exceptionally high rate of 0.57 per 1,000 customers, due mostly to difficulties in changing providers.
US video tracking business Rentrak has released findings on mobile broadcast television usage ‘ the Dyle Mobile TV service from broadcasters in the US, using local ATSC M/H broadcasts. The key findings show that average usage is 20 minutes a day and usage spikes around news broadcasts, in particular around the manhunt for the Boston bombing suspects, when viewing was 96% up on a normal week. Daytime viewership between 6am and 4pm represents 45% of Dyle and 36% is in-home. But Rentrak did not say how many people are watching Dyle. Dyle is now available in 37 US markets, potentially reaching 57% of the population, but we have no idea of how many devices have shipped that can view it.
NPD DisplaySearch says that the high cost of manufacture of OLED panels for TV screen sizes make them cost 7 times more than LCD right now. It puts a 55 inch HD screen at $2,454 in OLED and says it’s because of low manufacturing yields. What still? Perhaps it’s just the wrong technology.
Dish Network has abandoned its bid to acquire Clearwire after Sprint raised its bid and the Clearwire board changed its recommendation to support the Sprint bid. All of which means that a lot of time has gone by and Dish still does not have a clear plan on how it will exploit the spectrum it has acquired to create a return path for a triple or quad play. Other partner candidates are,’ let’s see’. AT&T and T-Mobile, with attention going immediately to the latter by the world’s analysts, and there’s always LightSquared, or not.
US broadband equipment supplier Adtran says it has launched its ProCloud Wi-Fi service, offering a hosted and fully-managed Wi-Fi service built on its multi-tenant Bluesocket virtual WLAN system, announced a while back. Adtran says that it has taken on extra services staff to launch this and provides 24×7 monitoring and resolution of technical issues, including hardware upgrades and moves/adds/changes. It has also launched several packages for managing such as WiFi Cloud.
The non-profit making BBC has taken the unprecedented step of raising really cheap debt in a seven-year US bond deal for $260 million, from a group of eight unnamed investors. The money will be used to finance the BBC Worldwide, and will also replace some of the BBC’s bank debt and spread it over a longer term.
At CommunicAsia Seawell Networks said that tv2u, a provider of authentication services, billing and content programming for OTT, announced a global Content Hub to be hosted by NTT MSC, in Malaysia. The content hub will also use technology from US encoder company Elemental Technologies, Minerva Networks with its EPG server, Verimatrix for DRM and VuBiquity to provide a content library. The idea is to white label all this for OTT and mobile service suppliers in the region. The Content Hub is launched in Kuala Lumpur’s Multimedia Super Corridor, Malaysia’s IT hub.
Reuters reported that DirecTV is in big trouble in Brazil where its majority owned Sky Brasil operation has over-reported subscriber numbers by as much as 200,000. It does not make it clear if the people who did this will be facing fraud charges or whether it was a mistake, but does describe ‘improper practices,’ which suggests fraud.’ The company will take a $25 million pretax charge in its second quarter to recognize what will now show as increased churn. The company discovered it after an investigation, but has not said why it was investigating in the first place. It’s share price has barely budged since it happened, so not many seem to care.
BT Vision, which is swapping the delivery of Sky Sports from a broadcast multiplex to a broadband line, has admitted that a few thousand subscribers just won’t be able to get it that way, because their line is not fast enough. It will use the terrestrial broadcast slots for its own new sports channels. BT Vision has just 810,000 pay TV subscribers and as many as 15,000 Sky Sports subscribers might be affected, said one source.
A US poll carried out by Harris Interactive and CouponCabin.com shows that almost half of US adults (45%) think cable TV is a waste of money. Some 81% say they are still subscribed to cable or satellite television services, but it turns out that for many it’s the sport that keeps them there, nothing else. More than one-in-ten (11%) report they have previously subscribed to satellite or cable TV, but don’t anymore and 8% say they have never subscribed to any TV service. Four out of ten Sports fans (43%) say the just can’t cut the cord because of their need for live sport, but many added that if there was an alternative way to get the sport, they’d do it in a shot.