Standards body the IEEE this week released documentation on TV white space coexistence methods. Specifically, the IEEE 802.19.1 standard is intended to play to the cognitive radio capabilities of TV white space devices, including geolocation awareness and access to information databases.
As of Monday, video steaming service Netflix is available in France as the company seeks to expand its presence in Europe beyond the UK and Ireland. Later this month the service will also launch in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg.
The European Commission this week recommended that the EU safeguard access to spectrum below 700MHz for digital terrestrial television until 2030. But the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has expressed concern about the early release of the 700MHz frequencies.
UK-based media empire BSkyB created a multinational pay TV business on Friday with the £4.9bn acquisition of Sky Italia and a 57.4 per cent stake in Sky Deutschland. The move puts Sky in a leading position in the pay TV market in the UK, Italy and Germany.
As spectrum efficiency becomes ever more important, UK public broadcaster the BBC is teaming up with equipment vendors Huawei and Qualcomm and mobile operator EE to demonstrate the benefits that multicast 4G broadcast can offer compared with unicast streaming.
The battle for control of Greece’s leading alternative fixed line operator continues apace, with OTE joining the fray on Tuesday. The Greek carrier launched a bid of between €250-300m on a debt-free cash-free basis for the pay TV operation, Nova, which is owned by Forthnet.
Spanish carrier Telefónica on Tuesday announced that it has made a €725m bid for 56 per cent of Distribuidora de Televisión Digital, a Spanish pay-TV provider that operates under the Digital Plus brand.
Cloud TV and connected home specialist Entone has announced a deal with Vodafone Netherlands that will see the Dutch operator deploying the Californian supplier’s IPTV services. Under the Vodafone Thuis brand, Vodafone will deliver TV services including video-on-demand and Pause Live TV over its FTTH network.
Belgian incumbent operator Belgacom has launched a cloud storage service for its fixed internet customers, offering 10GB of storage for free, 30GB for a monthly fee of €2.95 and 200GB for €9.95/month. The Belgacom Cloud service will also enable users to access stored files across the operator’s pay TV system, Belgacom TV.
Spanish Cable operator Ono has said it will press ahead with its planned IPO while continuing to engage with Vodafone over a possible acquisition, it has been reported. Citing two people “with knowledge of the matter”, news agency Bloomberg reported that Ono will slow preparations for the IPO, agreed at a board meeting on Thursday, to give Vodafone the option to up its previous bid, which was in the region of €7bn.
Cable CEOs debated the future of convergence between their own networks and mobile services at Cable Congress in Amsterdam this week. Leading executives said that cable operators are becoming mobile companies as consumption of content migrates to mobile.
Verizon Communications on Tuesday agreed to acquire Intel Media, a business division dedicated to the development of Cloud TV products and services. The US carrier will incorporate the Intel-developed technologies into its next-generation video services through the Verizon FiOS fibre optic network and over the top to any device, including via LTE.
Japanese electronics giant Panasonic has joined forces with Mozilla to develop and promote Firefox OS as an open and HTML5-based platform for smart TVs.
Kit vendor Alcatel-Lucent has announced two deals to supply access technology for China Telecom and China Mobile’s LTE networks.
Operator group Telenor has launched its own TV service in Hungary. The operator’s MyTV service offers live TV streaming as well as video on demand, and can be accessed on all internet connected devices.
US operator Verizon has announced plans to acquire content delivery network provider EdgeCast. The boards of directors of both firms have approved the acquisition and hope to finalise the deal early 2014. The value of the deal was not disclosed.
Google has launched a low-price wireless dongle designed to enable users to stream web content to their TV set.
The company said the Chromecast device is designed to “make it easy to bring your favourite online entertainment to the biggest screen in your house,” and is Google’s latest attempt to break into the living room on the back of its Google TV play.
Europe’s telecoms and media companies must embrace innovation in key areas such as mobile, cloud computing and big data, as well as forge strong strategic relationships with other industry players like content delivery networks, if they are to survive the current revenue squeeze, according to think tank IDATE.
Multimedia over coax (MoCA) helped drive the global home networking device market to $4.9bn in the second half of 2012, up five per cent on a sequential basis, according to US firm Infonetics Research.
Ericsson’s first quarter profits fell year on year to SEK1.2bn (€139m) from SEK8.8bn for the same period in 2012, largely due to the boost given to 1Q12 numbers by the firm’s exit from the Sony Ericsson device JV. While the vendor recorded a two per cent uptick in sales to SEK52bn it was hit by currency fluctuations and a disappointing performance from its network rollout business.
Will #Google be your future wireless provider, or how about #Microsoft or #Facebook? http://t.co/AKqrmph3my
27 January 2015 @ 09:57:06 UTC
#ZTE claims #MIMO trial strengthens its #5G leadership http://t.co/33eIIv9f7O #lte #networks #vendor #basestation
26 January 2015 @ 16:46:45 UTC
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