Ofcom has told the BBC that its plans to place its TV and radio services on the Internet could have a “negative effect” on its commercial rivals. The regulator fears that although the BBC’s involvement would encourage public interest in the services it also risks reducing the amount of commercial investment. The BBC’s plans for […]
Ofcom revokes Look 4 Love licence
Ofcom has revoked the broadcast licence for Look 4 Love 2. The channel had already left the Sky EPG after its owners Television Concepts Limited went into liquidation on January 12. It is normal practice for the regulator to revoke a licence after a company enters liquidation. No representations were made by Television Concepts despite […]
UPC trials Polish Internet TV
UPC has begun testing an Internet-delivered TV service in Poland. Similar to ones already available in The Netherlands and Switzerland, it consists of six channels – Animal Planet, CNN International, Discovery Channel, Fashion TV, National Geographic and TVN24 – and is initially being made available to its subscribers in Warsaw for no additional fee. UPC […]
Boost for Bulgarian digital TV
According to local reports, the private equity fund CEE Growth Luxembourg Sicar has invested around Leva3 million (€1.54 million) in the Bulgarian ISP bol.bg. As a result, it now controls 70% of Kit OOD, the company that owns the bol.bg trademark. Bol.bg was founded in 1993 by two individuals (Veni Markovski and Mitko Ganchev) and […]
Kiosque to become Cine+
The French media authority CSA has approved of a name change of the pay-per-view service Kiosque. The service offered on the combined Canalsat/TPS bouquet will from now be on called Cine+. It is available to all people subscribing to the service on the Canalsat DTH sevice.
KPN to sell tower business to TDF
KPN is selling its network of 23 large transmission towers to French broadcast transmission specialists TDF (Telediffusion de France). In addition, one tower will remain the property of KPN, but will be managed by TDF. So far, no financial details have been disclosed. Prior to the Dutch national analogue switch-off, overnight on Sunday December 10 […]
France 24 deemed inefficient
Just weeks after the December launch of international French news channel France 24 the Commission for Foreign Affairs has concluded that France needs to organise it’s international broadcasting more efficiently. The commission started an investigation after “France’s answer to BBC and CNN” took to the air late last year. The main recommendation: the fledgling news […]
TV Vlaanderen claims 30,000 households
Flemish DTH operator claims 30,000 households connected since their official launch in June, 2006. “These strong results show there is a need for an independent Flemish provider for digital television, ” said Kurt Pauwels, general manager of TV Vlaanderen, “This means we have reached already our goal for the first twelve months. We are confident […]
StarNordic buys FastTV stake
StarNordic has become a part owner of the Norwegian IPTV operation FastTV.net. The alliance means that StarNordic will now be able to target housing and aerial associations used to analogue TV with a digital IPTV offering from FastTV. At the same time FastTV will now be able to provide Internet and telecoms services using the […]
Cable Congress adds new speakers
Cable Europe has added a number of new speakers to its line up for the annual Cable Congress. Joining the get-together of European cable television executives are Vincent Dureau, OpenTV’s former director of technology, and now head of TV technology at Google. Dureau will deliver the keynote Cable meets the Web: Future of Televison. Paul […]