Telenor Broadcast Day – Oslo. Conax has confirmed it is to provide conditional access services to the new Europa 7 pay-TV platform. The network of eight HD channels will launch in June, marking the end of a long legal battle for the Italian broadcaster.
“The decoder will be sold through retailers all through Italy. The good news is that all the channels will be secured by Conax,” said CEO Berit Svendsen. As with all its clients, Conax will use chipset pairing, meaning that although a CI module will be used it will be tied to a particular set-top box.
Europa 7 will be in competition with Mediaset Premium, which already has 4.1 million cards in the market.
Although it obtained a TV concession in 1998, the broadcaster founded and owned by Francesco Di Stefano never went on air because the necessary frequencies were always used by Rete 4, a TV channel belonging to Silvio Berlusconi’s media group Mediaset.
The European Court of Justice delivered its judgment in January 2008, putting forward transitional arrangements ahead of a ruling by the regulator Agcom the following October.
