UK pay TV giants Virgin Media and BSkyB have finally put aside the dispute over channel carriage rights and payments, that has had them at each other’s throats over the past 20 months. At one point banker shareholders almost forced a sale of Virgin over the issue. The two have now agreed new carriage deals and the withdrawal of court proceedings means that Virgin customers will have access to BSkyB’s basic package of channels from November onwards.
Sweden/UK based wi-fi specialist Icomera, which claims to lead the world in using cellular gateways to connect mobile hotspots on moving public transport, said this week that the usage of its systems on passenger transport exceeded three and a half million sessions. One million passengers on trains, buses, coaches and ferries used the Wi-Fi services 3.72 million times, a 272% increase in the last twelve months. The company reckons that this means that Wi-Fi will continue to be popular despite mobile broadband’s rapid growth.
A US jury has decided that Boeing should pay $326 million to Craig McCaw’s ICO Communications over the provision of satellites to the mobile satellite services operation. Boeing already owed $371 million in compensatory damages awarded by the same jury last week. ICO brought the suit back in 2004 after Boeing brought Hughes Electronics which was going to provide ICO with a dozen satellites. Boeing simply demanded ICO paid $400 million extra to finish the work.
Israeli mobile TV chip maker Siano Mobile Silicon has announced an integration between its chips and the software of Cidana, a leader in mobile video software for Chinese mobile TV using CMMB. The integration is to work on a USB stick reference design for CMMB which can plug into a PC or MID.
UK satellite TV leader BSkyB finally made the elusive 9 million homes as customers this quarter signing up 334,000 new subscribers, but just 87,000 net new subs, and in the process ringing up £1.25 billion ($2 billion) for the quarter in revenues, up 5%. The company says it thinks it is still on track to reach 10 million homes by the end of 2010. It put its success, which was ahead of expectations, down to increasing HD offerings.
The smart money is now on a merger between Yahoo and AOL after news of them examining each other’s books has leaked out in the US press. These reports have come on the back of more anti-trust doubts being raised over the proposed Google Yahoo advertising pact, which was hurriedly entered into to prevent Microsoft buying Yahoo earlier this year.
Israeli conditional access specialist NDS has landed one of the best pay TV customers for India, in the form of Bharti Airtel. If it has the same kind of success that it has had in mobile, in pay TV, NDS will be onto a high growth winner. It supplied conditional access, its MediaHighway middleware and a customized EPG for the Bharti Airtel’s new digital satellite service. Bharti company was recently voted India’s most innovative company and ranked among the best performing companies in the world.
France Telecom grew its IPTV base by 211,000 subscribers last quarter to reach 1.75 million customers. Much of the growth was at its best established service in France, where it now has 1.603 million TV subscribers including 70,000 using satellite TV, and most of the rest on IPTV.
Dubai’s telecommunications company called simply ‘du’ has signed a deal with Ireland’s conditional access company Latens, to use it Conditional Access and Middleware system for its pay TV service, IPCAS. This now has to 50,000 subscribers.
US researcher DisplaySearch says that large area TFT LCD shipments used in TV and PC screens, showed weak demand last quarter, and that along with inventory adjustments, shipments fell by 1% since last quarter up just 7% on this time a year ago at 116 million panels. In previous periods growth has swayed between 23% and 42%, so this is quite a big reversal. However Notebook PC panel shipments reached a historical high of 38.6 million in the quarter, up 21% on last year.
It looks increasingly like BSkyB will buy the UK end of Tiscali with its 1.8 million broadband customers and 50,000 subscribes to its IPTV service Homechoice. The deal is expected to be agreed at around £450 million ($720 million). BSkyB appears to have beaten off a bid from Carphone Warehouse, according to rumors run in the UK national newspapers.
Circuit City Stores said this week that it will close down 155 of its less profitable US stores and reduce future store openings and aggressively renegotiate certain leases in order to cut costs and restructure its business. The reduction in consumer electronic purchases in the US recession has come at just the wrong time for the retail chain which previously discussed a merger deal with Blockbuster, which never went ahead. Circuit City is waiting on an $80 million tax rebate in the hope that it will provide enough money to see it through.
Time Warner Cable reported revenues up 8% for its third quarter to $4.3 billion. Video revenues rose 4% as prices rose and customers stayed roughly the same, and high-speed internet revenues rose 12% to $1.1 billion, as it took more customers away from the Telcos, as did Comcast (see separate piece). Voice revenues grew 37% to $421