It may own the satellites, but as an ISP, Telenor also has its eye on the delivery of content over the internet. Julian Clover reports from Oslo.
After a few years of losing out to Viasat, in the technology stakes at least, Canal Digital is back on track. The Telenor-owned satellite platform was the first in Europe to launch a regular HD service, but Viasat was an early mover in connected TV and the delivery of on demand through hybrid devices.
Patrick Hofbauer, the newly installed CEO of Canal Digital, is beginning to redress the balance. Hofbauer is very much his own boss, not least because as he is also head of the Telenor Broadcast division Hofbauer appears twice on the company’s organisation chart. Broadcast represents some 9% of the Nordic telco’s overall revenues.
Canal Digital has always been interested in content, buying HD rights to the Euro 2008 football championships, and its involvement in the Royal League competition. But there is now more emphasis, both on the acquisition of content, and its delivery.
Canal Digital Go has been created as a portal to deliver video content, both on hybrid boxes such as the new ADB device, and to the new frontier of connected TVs. Hofbauer says Canal Digital will continue to focus on HD, but also the multiscreen concept. “Our customers are demanding a higher quality on the picture, but they want the same from other platforms,” he says, suggesting that just transferring content from one device to another isn’t enough and that maybe the next thing to concern broadcasters will be the quality of their online pictures.
In addition to the current 2,500 movies, rising to 5,000 by the end of the year, there are also linear channels from Discovery, Animal Planet and Travel, amongst others. However, Hofbauer admits that getting the rights to show linear TV on the web remains challenging. He also questions the need for ever-larger hard drives on set-tops when the majority of recorded programmes are watched back within a few days. The only need to up the capacity would of course be for the benefit of HD programmes.
The restricted Telenor Broadcast now buys its content centrally, delivering it onwards across PC, mobile and of course Canal Digital. The plan is of course to acquire the distribution rights across all services, but that’s not always easy, and the broadcasters just as often don’t have the rights available to them to sell on.
Comoyo has been created as an internet services company, designed initially to give consumers in the Nordic region a one-time login to their content, regardless of the platform. It launches this summer in Norway with Sweden following in the autumn.
