The US court of appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has said that the FCC cannot cap the amount of market share a cable TV operator can have. This verdict, if maintained through appeal, will mean that Comcast is free to continue acquiring other cable operators. The court said the 30% population cap was arbitrary and capricious. However in the US it is illegal to own newspapers and TV stations in the same town and to reach more than 34% of the population with either one, so expect more FCC resistance. The FCC chairman Julius Genachowski is reviewing the decision and has not yet said if he will lodge an appeal.
Intel said this week that there was stronger than expected demand for chips this quarter and now expects revenue for the third quarter to be $9 billion, plus or minus $200 million, as compared to the previous range of $8.5 billion, plus or minus $400 million. The margin will settle in the upper part of the range also, it said. The company is now in its quiet period for the third quarter figures.
Skype will double connection fees to many of its calls from the US especially international calls to non-Skype phones (Skype out) outside the US, which will rise to a $0.079 connection fee, compared to the current US $0.039 fee, from September 6.
The Indian government has finally given dates and rules on when it will auction WiMAX and 3G spectrum. It will put four 3G licenses and three WiMAX licenses on the block nationwide and says bidding for the 3G licenses must start at $716 million and $360 million for the WiMAX spectrum. The auction process is expected to last three months. The government owned operators Bharat Sanchar Nigam and Mahanager Telephone Nigam both have 3G spectrum already. External bidders are now allowed, triggering expectation that AT&T from the US and NTT from Japan may be interested in bidding.
The handset arms of NEC, Hitachi and Casio have each said separately that they are not in talks to merge into a single company. However most sources continued to repeat the rumors that were sparked last week by a Reuters report on the potential for them to merge. The Japanese handset market is 20% down this year and at best will be flat next year, leading to widespread discussions on consolidations.
Italian ISP Tiscali had an even bigger loss this quarter, but much of that was due to crystallizing a loss with the sale of its UK operations. Its loss was €345 million but it lost €403 million on the UK sale. That leaves it profitable for the rest of the business compared to a €57.2 million loss a year earlier. In May the Carphone Warehouse bought the UK assets for a knock down price of just £236 million ($388 million).
German notebook maker Smartbook has got a court order saying that Qualcomm can no longer use ‘smartbook’ in Germany as a way to describe what it sees as a device category just underneath netbooks,
Qualcomm will be fined with €250,000 for every time it slips up, the court said.
Tandberg Television said this week that Cogeco has selected its OpenStream Digital Services Platform as its back-office system. Cogeco Cable is Canada’s fourth largest MSO with more than 400,000 digital subscribers in Quebec and Ontario.
Nokia has decided once again not to launch its Comes with Music service in the US quite yet and will not revisit the idea until some time in 2010. ‘Comes With Music,’ was commercially launched in the UK last October and has gone into nine other countries but Nokia is having trouble getting across the idea that music under the deal is free. We suspect it’s more to do with how much expensive the device is when it comes with music, meaning it’s not free really.
US cable equipment supplier Arris this week has acquired key assets, including intellectual property from EG Technology, for $6.5 million. Arris took patents and video processing technology for digital networks, and will take on 20 or so existing employees.
Digital watermarking and fingerprinting company Civolution and Eurovision Production Coordination, said this week that Eurovision content would be monitored using Civolution’s Teletrax. The service will be used to track all video packages produced during the Venice International Film Festival and distributed to Eurovision members for use in TV news and arts programming.
Norwegian video specialist T-VIPS said that at IBC it would launch its DVB-T2 Gateway which will convert DVB-T video to full DVB-T2 compliance to give operators 30% bandwidth increase when they migrate to DVB-T2. The idea is to use the DVB-T2 Gateway and used any spare bandwidth it throws up to launch new services such as HD and Push VOD. But that means all your clients changing their set tops.
Tandberg Television said it will launch Its next-generation MPEG-4 AVC HD encoder for 4:2:0 video at IBC next week. This will provide a 20% to 30% improvement in compression efficiency compared to today’s best MPEG-4 AVC HD encoding and will enable direct to home providers to carry more HDTV channels without increasing bandwidth costs, the company says. The company also said it would show its MPEG-4 AVC HD 4:2:2 system for contribution and distribution.
One of the biggest cellular operators in South American Am’rica M’vil said that it would partner with Nokia to bring its Ovi Store to mobile customers. America M’vil customers will be able to download and purchase apps, videos, ringtones or games from Ovi Store later this year through Nokia’s flagship device, the Nokia N97. Am’rica M’vil is the first operator in the region to announce the roll-out of a Latin America-wide offering of the Ovi Store to its customers.
This week Spotify said that its music streaming service application has been approved to run on the Apple App Store. The software application is free, but it requires a premium subscription, which costs £10 ($16.20) a month.
Time Warner Cable said this week that it will test TV Everywhere, the idea of delivering free video programming over the web for customers that are its pay TV subscribers. TV networks participating in this trial include Syfy, TNT, AMC, BBC America, TBS, HBO, CBS, WE TV, IFC, Sundance Channel, Discovery Communications and Smithsonian Channel. The trial is limited to a small number of TWC homes and will move to include about 5,000 homes shortly. Comcast is already two months into a similar test.
NDS the conditional access company that was spun out from News Corp last year, said that it has teamed up with the European subsidiary of Access in Japan, to use its Netfront browser in its NDS Infinite TV content platform. Infinite TV was launched at IBC last year and is the NDS software to allows consumers to view traditional linear channels, catch-up TV, and on-demand and web content through a single user interface, which can also serve context driven advertising. The Netfront browser system will be installed on a number of leading TV makes next year which could bring Infinite TV with it. NDS already supports the NetFront Browser on its Mediahighway set top software.
At IBC NDS will also be showing its NDS EPG Framework to help broadcasters design, deploy and manage their own EPG cheaply. Get, Viasat and Bharti Airtel have already started using EPG Framework. The idea is to turn the EPG into an interactive and VoD portal as well. The company will also introduce an audience measurement system using a set top return path, at IBC.
Harmonic’s Entone VoD server arm has cut a deal with Sweden’s Edgeware, which invented using cheap Flash memory for VoD. The Entone’s IP video gateways and media hubs will now work with Edgeware’s VOD servers. We should think they are so cheap that Entone customers were asking for them.
Samsung Electronics last week told the Korean Times that it plans to build a KRW 4 trillion ($3.2 billion) LCD panel plant at a yet to be decided location in China. Its previous large LCD plants were on its home soil in Korea, and its most recent one is shared with Sony through their S-LCD joint venture. The new plant will use eighth-generation LCD technology, and cut 50-inch LCD panel for TVs. It will begin production in the second half of 2011. It appears from statements the company made that the panels will not be shared with Sony from this plant.
UK set top specialist Amino Communications, has unveiled a new IPTV PVR for HD programming at either 720p and 1080i resolutions, called the A532, which it says supports advanced low bitrate video codecs.