More news emerge this week on the Italian free to air satellite that first came to light in June. We said that the time it would be launched by public broadcaster RAI and commercial rival Mediaset, jealous of the 5 million or so pay TV customers that Sky Italia has managed to accrue in Italy.
RAI and Mediaset will own 48% of the service each, which is to be named
Tiv’ or Tiv’ Sat. Telecom Italia will take the small 4% remaining and the service could be on air as soon as news March. That’s because they each have existing agreements with Eutelsat’s Hot Bird satellite, which is the one which Sky Italia uses.
Press speculation in Italy has suggested that other satellites could be use and that negotiations with Eutelsat are not complete, but it still seems to be the best placed satellite for the service.
The satellite will use encryption, from Netherlands based supplier Irdeto, not to prevent unauthorized access because it is free to air, but to prevent piracy.
However since both Telecom Italia and Mediaset have pay TV bouquets, the supply of a conditional access system may lead to those pay TV services also being hosted on the satellite.
We have maintained since the UK Freesat launch that a satellite delivering 200 free channels, many of them HD, just for the price of the set top and satellite dish, is hugely disruptive for pay TV services in Europe and predicted that the idea would catch on fast.