Dutch incumbent telecoms operator KPN told RTL Nieuws Saturday, that it plans to discontinue its metered dial-up Internet access service(s), sometime this year. KPN and its ISPs still have approximately 900,000 dial-up subscribers, however according to the telco many of those are either no longer using the service or using dial-up only sporadically. The number [...]

Satellite radio operator ONDAS Media has been officially registered as an operator by the Spanish regulatory authority CMT (Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones). The licence will allow ONDAS to operate its planned subscription service across the European Union. “ONDAS Media requires various spectrum allocation and operational licences for the launch of its satellite radio [...]

BBC Sport has confirmed that this year’s Six Nations rugby competition will be screened in high definition. Coverage on BBC HD and BBC One will begin with the England-Scotland clash at 16.00 on February 3. “We’ve had terrific feedback on our trial HD broadcasts in other sports, so this is a major step forward for [...]

Angel Gambinio has become the latest senior staff member to leave MTV’s London office. Gambino joined the broadcaster from the BBC in September 2005. She is attributed with the launch of the video-on-demand service MTV Overdrive and the user generated content channel MTV Flux. Just one week ago MTV Networks Europe president and CEO Simon [...]

Near neighbours Romania and Slovakia are in many respects at opposite ends of the region’s TV industry spectrum. While the former is generally acknowledged to be a dynamic market attractive to foreign investors, the latter is resolutely low-key and at times feels cut off from the mainstream. These perceptions have to some degree been borne [...]

Israel’s cable platform HOT has reached a last minute agreement with BBC Prime to keep the entertainment channel on the network. New contracts have also been established with Hallmark, Eurosport News and National Geographic’s Adventure One. The agreements followed a heated period of negotiations after content costs spiralled to NIS800 million (€146m) in 2006. HOT [...]

Magyar Telekom has been given the green light by the competition authority in Hungary to acquire Mobilpress, one of the country’s leading mobile content producers and aggregators. Last December the incumbent Deutsche Telekom-backed telco signed an agreement to buy MobilPress outright and a 75% stake in the mobile content provider MFactory for a combined total [...]

BT has emerged as a potential bidder for the UK assets of Tiscali, the Italian telco which last year acquired Video Networks’ Homechoice business. The Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore says that BT has begun talks with investment bank Merrill Lynch to discuss the acquisition. Homechoice has around 46,000 subscribers in London and Hertfordshire [...]