Dutch football reaches cable

Dutch cable networks will now once again be able to offer their subscribers live football from the Tele2 Live Eredivisie Voetbal channels. For the past two years Dutch football has only been available via IPTV, DTT and DTH because there was no contract with Tele 2, which owns the live rights to the Dutch Eredivisie, the top tier of the country’s football.

Following an agreement between IPTV provider Tele 2 and major cable operators including UPC, Casema, @Home, Multikabel, CAIW and Delta, cable viewers will now have access again to the Dutch main competition. The Tele 2 football product can be purchased as a stand-alone product or in a package with premium channels Sport1 and Film1 from Chellomedia.

In a separate agreement, the Tele 2 IPTV service will now start to offer the Film1 and Sport1 packages to their subscribers. All four Film1 channels will become available as well as Sport1 and Sport1 Extra.

Premiere unlocks channels for Cryptoworks

On November 2, 2007, a number of Premiere channels will become available to viewers in Austria using the Cryptoworks encryption system by joining the ORF DTH platform. The German pay-TV operator has reached an agreement with the Austrian public broadcaster ORF and its subsidiary ORS, which operates the national DTH platform. This translates in an additional 1.1 million potential households in the country. Although Premiere has been available in the Austrian market, take up has remained limited because Cryptoworks is the de facto encryption standard as it is being used by the free-to-view ORF platform.

Although only Premiere Austria and Premiere Thema will initially be available, most Premiere channels will eventually join. Most likely, the channels on the Premiere Star platform, which uses Entavio, will also become part of the offer to Austrian viewers. New subscribers can use their current ORF smart card, which will be upgraded when people subscribe. The client relationship will remain with Premiere, which will also handle all sales and marketing activities for the pay channels. Current Premiere customers owning a Premiere Nagra receiver in Austria will not be affected.

BigBang for BigBand as revenue expectations deflate

Switched digital video and data head-end equipment vendor Bigband Networks has warned that its Q3 revenues will be in the $35-39 million range,as opposed to the expected $54-58 million. The lowered revenue guidance follows a profit warning issued at the beginning of August when the vendor announced its Q2 and H1 results. As a result of lower revenue expectations, BigBand expects to report an operating loss for the third quarter.

Bigband identified three reasons for its lower than expected revenue.

• Ongoing deployments have required more software customization and integration than originally expected. This impacted the company’s ability to recognize switched digital revenue for some deployments in the third quarter.
• A slowdown in Telco-TV revenue, as its major customer worked through some previously purchased inventory.
• Continued softness in its data business.

Orange Dutch mobile and broadband to DT

The long expected final stage of an extensive asset swap between the French and German incumbent telcos France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom, namely the sale of the Dutch Orange division to DT, has been agreed to.

Deutsche Telekom will acquire the 1.9 million mobile and 458,000 broadband customer business for a total consideration of €1.33 billion on an enterprise value basis. The proceeds will be payable in cash upon closing of the transaction, and FT expects the closing could occur as soon as October 1.

The merger will make T-Mobile the second-largest mobile phone operator in terms of subscribers in the Dutch market after integration with its own mobile operation in the country. Dutch incumbent KPN is market leader, with Vodafone coming in third place. Earlier, KPN acquired Telfort mobile.

Sickinghe calls for more European content

CTAM CABLE MARKETING EUROSUMMIT – BARCELONA. Telenet CEO Duco Sickinghe has told content providers they should be looking to introduce more local content.

Addressing channel representatives attending the CTAM Eurosummit, Sickinghe suggested that with production costs per hour now sometimes as low as $2,000 local content had become more affordable. “Can’t you start setting up more local operations and bring your expertise to more local content,” he said. “People care about the news from their village and Iraq, but in between there’s very little they care about.”

Sickinghe said that a market such as Europe with very small markets was a tough challenge, movies were easy, and to a lesser extent series, but local sports could be quite complex. It was easier in the Benelux where subtitling is possible, but more challenging in markets where dubbing was required.

Sony to trial day & date in Singapore

CTAM CABLE MARKETING EUROSUMMIT – BARCELONA. Sony is to trial day & date in Singapore, said John McMahon, President and Managing Director, Europe, Sony Pictures, this morning at the CEO Forum ‘Cable From All Sides’. “All the studios are now looking at day & date and we will trial it in Singapore.” Warner Bros is currently trialling day & date in Benelux and Scandinavia with opening the DVD and VOD window at the same time. Platform operators have been asking for this to happen for some time as they believe it will increase buy rates.

Transitional Tihany

Chris Dziadul reviews the Hungarian cable conference.

The overriding impression at the HCA/HCTA cable conference Tihany earlier this week was one of a market in transition.

Hungary, like most other countries in CEE, has been slow to roll out digital cable and to date only one of its leading operators – T-Kábel – offers a service. However, given that this has been up and running since late 2005, the 35,000+ subscribers it claims appears modest.

UPC, Hungary’s leading MSO, is nevertheless expected to launch its digital cable offer in the first half of 2008 and FiberNet, the number three player, could follow soon afterwards.

Consolidation in the Hungarian cable industry is also on the cards, especially now that the rule limiting any given operator from serving more than one-third of the population – the figure used to be an even more restrictive one-sixth – no longer applies. There are rumours that FiberNet, which is backed by Warburg Pincus, may make a move for T-Kábel, and that the leading operators will start buying up smaller ones, of which there are hundreds.

On the other hand, according to Ferenc Kéry, the president of the Hungarian Cable Communications Association (HCA), both VOD and HD are unlikely to be introduced by Hungarian cable operators for at least another year.

In the latter case, there has recently been talk of a new Hungarian HD channel. Operated by a company named Saint Media, it could make its debut as soon as the beginning of 2008, though further details are unavailable.

Other (SD) channel launches are meanwhile likely to continue unabated. IKO Kábeltévé, for instance, will give a debut to no fewer then 10 by the end of the year, and other companies will launch a total of eight in the same period.

Although the recent success of the DTH platform DigiTV has undoubtedly shocked the Hungarian cable industry, Kéry says that some of its subscribers are starting to return to cable, which they are finding offers a better service.

While the launch of a commercial DTT platform is still some months off, IPTV is already up and running in Hungary. However, the take-up of the T-Home TV service operated by the incumbent telco is low – launched in Q4 2006, its subscriber figure is believed to be under 10,000 – and leading alternative providers have yet to enter the market.

October launch for Discovery HD on In-Di

The Belgian cable operator Interkabel will launch Discovery HD on its digital In-Di platform on October 1. The HD offer will then consist of seven channels – VTM HD, National Geographic HD, Discovery HD, HD1, Exqi and two premium movie channels and Kinepolis TV. Discovery HD will be available free to all HD customers until the end of the year.

Multimedia Polska introduces VOD

Multimedia Polska has become the first cable operator in Poland to offer VOD. Sales of its new service have started today (September 28), with a full launch scheduled for October 1. According to local reports, the service will initially be available in the cities of Gdynia, Kalisz, Lublin, Lódz, Olsztyn and Torun, which together account for around 90%, or 450,000 homes, of its subscriber base. Its library will at first consist of 600 titles, though the total will eventually rise to several thousand. Multimedia Polska has just over 10,000 digital subscribers and introduced HD channels to its programme offer earlier this year.

Peled warns of unsettling time

CTAM CABLE MARKETING EUROSUMMIT – BARCELONA. Even though this is “the most unsettling time in the history of television,” according to NDS Group President and CEO Dr Abe Peled in his keynote address to the CTAM Eurosummit 2007, cable does have opportunities ahead, “as pay-TV operators have to become total entertainment partners of the consumer and deliver content anytime, anywhere.” Yes, there is competition coming from niche content suppliers, user generated websites and mainstream media are launching web channels and on demand programmes, but “regular broadcast delivery will remain the most cost effective delivery for mass media TV for the next five years.”

But content owners are increasingly after direct contact with cable’s customers, he warned, “Disney launched a small video player called Disney. You can buy movies on a small SD card and play it back, but you are able to plug such an SD card into any device, as most mobile devices now have an SD interface.”

There are a lot of contenders after this, trying to bypass you as a cable company to reach the audience. There are PC players, such as Hulu, Joost, XMBC. There are the game consoles with direct broadband access. And Sony is now selling all its Bravia TV sets in Japan and the US with an ethernet connector in the back and they come with a television browser.”

However, “cable systems have a real opportunity to offer the best of both worlds, of broadband and broadcast. Broadband IP delivery will be a complementary medium best suited for on demand and long tail content. Pay-TV operators need to embrace broadband and long tail content and offer their customers the ease of access and choice. They should expand their customer relationship to become their media partner from any source, on any device, anytime.”

This should all come in one customer interface from a hybrid set-top box. In the new world, advertising can also be more targeted, according to demographics or postal codes. The days of mass advertising seem to disappear and there is a growing demand for accountability.

“TV advertising, we know it works, but it’s article of faith. When you spend a lot of money, it works. But now advertisers expect more targeted, auditable and accountable advertising.”

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