08-09 - TELE-satellite International Magazine

MEDIA
Satellite & Broadband News
– within university campuses. The acquisition
will see Freewire launching in the
US and Scandinavia later this year.
BBC HD AVAILABLE ON VIRGIN TV
Content from the BBC HD channel has been made
available to Virgin Media subscribers via the public
broadcaster’s iPlayer online catch-up service. The
agreement between the BBC and Virgin Media
TV means customers with an HD V+ set-top box
and HD-ready television will now be able to watch
BBC HD content and on-demand. The BBC added
its HD channel to the iPlayer service in April.
VIRGIN MEDIA PREPARES 200
MBPS BROADBAND
Virgin Media is doing its best to keep ahead of the
demands of new technology and is testing 200
Mbps broadband in Ashford, Kent. The company
is preparing for an expected demand in the future
for streaming TV in HD and 3D formats, and playing
3D computer games. Virgin is carrying out a
six month pilot scheme in Ashford, and will test
3D and HD TV services, video conferencing and
home video surveillance. The 200 Mbps service
is believed to be the fastest in the world, followed
by 160 Mbps in Japan and 101 Mbps in the US.
SKY+ HD DVR IN OVER ONE MILLION HOMES
BSkyB has announced that its Sky+ HD service has
now been deployed in over a million Sky households
(1,022 million, compared to 465,000 this time
last year), following record sales in the first three
months of 2009. The Sky+ DVR service (which is
powered by technologies from NDS and OpenTV)
added 406.000 net new subscribers during the
quarter and is now in over 5 million homes.
FREEVIEW TO GO HD FOR WORLD CUP
Ilse Howling, the managing director of Freeview,
has disclosed that the roll-out of Freeview HD,
which was originally set to launch in line with the
switchover timetable, has been brought forward.
Some 40 per cent of homes in the UK will have
access to Freeview HD for the football tournament
in South Africa next June. Plans for the
roll-out of the BBC’s iPlayer on Freeview are
also ahead of schedule, with expectations that
iPlayer-enabled Freeview boxes will be available
later this year. Howling also said that almost
14 million homes have HD ready televisions.
N O R T H A M E R I C A
CANADA
619.000 HDTV SUBSCRIBERS
FOR ROGERS CABLE
Rogers Cable has announced that its digital cable
subscriber base grew by 11.5% in the last year to
1.59 million subscribers. In addition, the company
announced significant growth in the number of
HDTV subscribers. In the first three months of
the year, the number of HDTV subscribers at
Rogers climbed 9% to 619,000 households.
TELUS TOPS 100.000 SUBSCRIBERS
FOR TELUS TV
Telus passed 100.000 subscribers for its IPTV
service Telus TV in April, as it continues to rollout
infrastructure and supporting marketing campaigns
for the IPTV service in Alberta, British Colombia
and Eastern Quebec. Since launching the service,
the company has added 33 HD channels, PVR
features with up to 60 hours of HD recording, and
high-definition on-demand titles, and through a
concerted investment programme is also expanding
HD coverage of its network. Telus also revealed
that it intends to launch Telus Satellite TV later this
year, enabling the company to extend the footprint
of its multi-play services to more than 90% of
households across British Colombia and Alberta.
UNITED STATES
CENTURYTEL TO EXPAND IPTV SERVICE
CenturyTel is expanding its IPTV service to more
communities within its service footprint, testing the
market to determine if it will do a full-scale rollout
of IPTV services in the territory it got through its
acquisition of Embarq last year. CenturyTel, which
has been operating a pilot IPTV program in La
Crosse, Wisconsin, for the past four years, said
it plans to extend the service beyond that area
by using bonded ASDL2+ broadband lines.
DISH NETWORK, CABLEVISION
ADD HDTV CHANNELS
Dish Network has introduced a number of new HD
channels, claiming it now offers more HD services
than any other US provider. Dish’s total number
of HD offerings now exceeds 140. The new feeds
are for FX, Speed, Logo, Max TV and Fashion
TV. For its part, Cablevision has reached 100 HD
channels throughout their markets by June. New HD