Apple is to launch its online video sales business in Europe, some 15 months after the US debut of the store. Confirmation came from the seemingly unlikely source of the Luxembourg finance minister Jeannot Krecke, who confirmed that Apple had been in talks with the Luxembourg authorities “for several months”. Luxembourg will therefore extend its [...]

UPC has announced a major upgrade of its cable Internet service in Hungary. As from this March the 200,000 subscribers to chello will be offered a total of four packages with download speeds of up to 20Mbps for no additional fee. The company is reacting to growing competition from the incumbent telco’s T-Online subsidiary and [...]

The BBC Trust has given its provisional backing to the Corporation’s on demand television services. Included are the seven-day catch up service, on cable and IPTV, and the Internet-delivered iPlayer. The Trust has acknowledged some of the criticisms from Ofcom and agreed that the proposals around ’series stacking’ – where a series remains available for [...]

HBO Comedy will make its debut in Central and Eastern Europe on February 1 when it launches on the Cyfra+ DTH platform in Poland. The service, which will be broadcast in Polish, will be on air for 16 hours daily between 10.00 and 02.00 and join four other HBO channels – HBO, HBO 2, Cinemax [...]

BSkyB has announced subscriber growth of 432,000 in the second quarter, the highest figure in six years. An additional 183,000 net new customers were added bringing total DTH subscriber numbers to 8.441 million. There was also record growth for the Sky+ Digital Video Recorder product, rising to 2.13 million, in 1.97 million households. When the [...]

SES New Skies announced the failure of the launch of NSS-8, the sixth satellite in the fleet, onboard a Zenith-3SL launch vehicle, and the resulting total loss of the satellite. The Sea Launch vehicle, carrying the satellite, experienced an anomaly at the time of lift-off, resulting in total loss of the satellite. In a press [...]

Sweden’s TeliaSonera is to offer its broadband customers a free package of eight television channels and the ability to view the Internet directly on their television sets. Kanalpaket Start is comparable with the starter packages offered by the Swedish cable market. Start is one of four IPTV packages on offer from TeliaSonera to customers with [...]

The Polish public broadcaster TVP has announced its highest ever earnings from advertising, with the PLN1.1 billion (€280.7 million) posted in 2006 being 6% up on the previous year’s total. The incumbent Polish telco TPSA has meanwhile revealed that its net profit in Q4 2006 amounted to PLN381 million, or a disappointing 21.3% less than [...]