International News 18th December

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France Telecom premieres MaLigne TV


With "MaLigne TV" and "TPS L", the new services of France Telecom and TPS, television viewers can now receive both the TPS program package and digital quality movies and on demand, directly over their telephone line. With this new service, customers can simultaneously telephone, surf the Internet and watch television on a regular TV set.

The services are available starting now in the Lyon area, reaching half a million households. They will be available in the Paris region in spring 2004, followed by a swift rollout in other major French cities.

France Telecom "MaLigne TV" customers will also be able to buy the services from kiosks placed with multiple partners. Television viewers will be able to select from a catalogue of programmes including: exclusive new movies, classic movies, TV programmes time-shifted news from TF1, M6 reports, children's shows, and more.

The VOD service is available through France Telecom partnerships with many content producers, including TPS, TF1, M6, Arte, France Televisions and Movie System and through the CNC, Lobster Film, Roissy Film.



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Spain: 30% growth in DTH subscribers


The single Spanish digital DTH platform, Digital Plus, currently has 1,860,000 subscribers, 30 per cent more than last year, when there were two different platforms in the marketplace, the Sogecable-owned Canal Satelite Digital and Telefonica-controlled Via Digital.

The company has announced that it will do its utmost to get as many new clients as possible during Christmas, a "very good time" to capture subscribers, according to Jose Manuel Lorenzo, Director of Content at Sogecable. Last year, the former Canal Satelite Digital managed to capture up to 8,000 clients during Christmas.

To this end, Digital Plus (150 TV services with 400 new films just released every year) has designed a special programme that will include the release of 90 cinema titles. For the company, 2004 will be a year of consolidation and a year in which the platform plans to capture 500,000 new clients paving the way for reaching breakeven in 2005 as it expects.

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France number 3 in Europe for ADSL


The French telecoms regulator ART has issued its decision on France Telecom's wholesale tariffs for Collect IP/ADSL and Access IP/ADSL. At the same time it gave an update on the ADSL market in France and explained the (somewhat complex) differences between the various types of ADSL access.

According to the ART, the French broadband market was worth some E1.5 billion in 2003. 2.81 million subscribers use ADSL as the means to access broadband, and another 380,000 use cable. Other technologies of broadband access, such as WiFi, UMTS, power cable, satellite, and radio local loop, are still very marginal. The ART also pointed out that the meaning of the term broadband varies from country to country. In France anything better than a dial-up modem is generally counted as broadband, including entry level offers at 128 kbit/s. The ART considers that this is a good score and that France is catching up, out of an overall broadband population in Europe of 17.5 million. France lies currently behind Germany and the UK in broadband subscribers.

The overwhelming majority (2.5 million) of French ADSL subscribers are supplied by the so-called "option 5" structure, whereby France Telecom supplies ADSL on wholesale to the ISPs who then sell it on to subscribers. Option 5 subscribers are split between 1.4 million Wanadoo (France Telecom) subscribers and 1.1 million other ISPs. 215,000 subscribers have completely unbundled access or "option 1" and 100,000 the intermediate "option 3".

The details of the market and the complete breakdown of the new tariffs are available on www.art-telecom.fr

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NDS completes MediaHighway acquisition

NDS announced it has completed the acquisition of Thomson's MediaHighway business, following the receipt of certain regulatory approvals and the fulfillment of certain other conditions. The deal was announced on September 13th, 2003. NDS bought the business for a total of E60 million in cash funded from its existing cash reserves.

NDS also announced the appointment of Caroline Le Bigot as NDS Vice President & General Manager of NDS Technologies, France, which employs over 300 people. For the past four years, Le Bigot has held senior positions at Thomson, initially as VP of Broadband Access Products for Europe and Asia and latterly as VP of Cable Business and Retail Digital Decoders Worldwide. Prior to Thomson, Caroline spent three years with Gemplus as General Manager of their Southern EMEA Division after 11 years at Apple Computer.

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FCC OKs Intelsat IPO extension

Intelsat said the Federal Communications Commission approved its request under the ORBIT Act to extend the date by which the company is required to complete an initial public equity offering.

The deadline has moved from Dec. 31 to June 30, 2004.

"Intelsat respects its obligations under the ORBIT Act and we appreciate the responsiveness of the FCC in considering the many factors that led to our request," said Intelsat CEO Conny Kullman.

Kullman said that at the moment Intelsat is focused on closing and integrating the North American satellite assets it is purchasing from Loral. After the deal is done, then the company will conduct its IPO, he said.
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APTN links Europe with the US

Associated Press Television News (APTN) is launching the first fibre network to link mainland European cities with the US. The service - which has been named 'APTN Connect' - will go live on 5 January 2004.

APTN Connect will provide broadcast and commercial clients with a dedicated fibre network linking eight of the world's major cities: Paris, Brussels, Rome, London, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and Washington DC. More cities, on both continents, will be added to the service during 2004. Until now, fibres have tended to link Europe to London for onpass to the US.

APTN Connect provides a two-way transmission path for high-resolution video - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It uses 6.5 Mb of 'portable' bandwidth, which can be expanded up to 34 Mb, if required - to carry high- quality programming or content.

Broadcasters in foreign bureaux will now be able to feed video and sound directly to master control rooms in destination cities via a connection to their local APTN bureau.

APTN is offering ad-hoc clients a three-month introductory rate of US$60 for a 15-minute feed - then US$4 for each additional minute - to and from any of the cities on the network. APTN will also provide written quotes to clients wanting to invest in their own 'ports' to allow uninterrupted access - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.



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Nokia open office in the Big Apple

Nokia, the world's biggest manufacturer of mobile phones, will for the first time switch a part of its top management team away from Finland, where the company is based, according to the FT.

Nokia said that it would establish a new corporate office in the New York metropolitan area, which would house the office of Rick Simonson, who was appointed CFO in September as part of the company's biggest management overhaul in five years.

Lauri Kivinen, head of corporate communications, denied that this was part of a wider plan to move the headquarters away from Finland, saying: "This is a practical move, not a conspiracy.



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Vogel to Chair Bertelsmann supervisory board

German media group Bertelsmann has been appointed Dieter Vogel as the new Supervisory Board Chairman effective January 1, 2004. Vogel was previously Vice-Chairman of the Supervisory Board.

JŸrgen Strube will be the new Vice-Chairman of the Supervisory Board. The departing Supervisory Board Chairman Gerd Schulte-Hillen is leaving Bertelsmann at the end of the year as announced in November.