Telco IPTV Barred in Argentina

An article in TV Telco Latam said that a ban has been upheld in Argentina that bans Telcos from offering cable services for the next 99 years. This was a ruling on the appeal of a ruling that banned Telcos from IPTV in Argentina in September 2007.

This kind of regulatory issue is common in Latin America and Asia, where there is a strong movement to protect the the cable companies from the Telcos. It could take years for these regulatory impediments to disappear.

Nielson TV Viewing Numbers

Light Reading has published an article giving the results of the latest Nielson study of TV viewing in the U.S. Interesting conclusions from these numbers include:

• About 55 percent of Internet users watch videos over the Internet
• About 22 percent of TV viewers are using DVRs and is growing strongly
• The number of mobile TV viewers is about 2 percent of the number of TV users
• Average time spent watching Internet videos is only about 2 percent of the time watching TV
• Mobile TV users watch it only about 3 percent of the time spent watching TV, however more than 3 hours a month is significant for such a small screen.

It is worth looking at the tables in the Light Reading article. While Internet video is getting a lot of attention, most people just do not watch it very much. Mobile TV has not caught on yet but appears to watched on a regular but casual basis.

Free to Acqure Alice France

Variety has reported that Free in France will acquire Telecom Italia's Alice broadband provider. It has arranged a loan for $1.6 billion for this deal. Alice new has 850 thousand broadband subscribers. This will be a merger of the number three and four broadband providers in France and will put the combination into the number two position. France Telecom is number one and Neuf Cegetel will be pushed from number two to number three.

This is a good move for Free in response to the series of mergers that Neuf put together over the last few years that added Cegetel and Deutesche Telekom's Club Internet.

Symmetricom Video Nightmares

Symmetricom has put up a short video that demonstrate 10 common digital video quality problems.

It is worth viewing and the commercial at the end is not intrusive. I have experienced all of these problems using over the air digital.

Brasil Telecom's FTTH IPTV Strategy

TV Telco Latam published and article describing Brasil Telecom's plans to deploy FTTH to support IPTV services in six cities before the end of 2008. It will focus its FTTP deployment on the most prosperous neighborhoods.

The company currently offers IPTV over ADSL-2+. This service is not profitable today because regulation restricts it to video on demand service. It expects that new legislation will lift this restriction.

Brasil Telecom is following the example of other developing countries and moving directly to FTTH access networks. However, IPTV will not be a financially viable service in Brazil until it can offer broadcast content as well as video on demand.

Espial Agrees to Acquire Kasenna

Espial agreed to acquire Kasenna. Espial is based in Ottawa, Canada and provides IPTV middleware and applications software. Kasenna is California based and provides video on demand systems as well as its own middleware software. The transaction is expected to close about July 9, 2008.

Espial has been working to move up the chain and become a prominent IPTV systems provider. Kasenna was an SGI spin off that has been providing video on demand systems for many years. While this acquisition will increase Espial's presence in the IPTV market, it still has a lot of work to do. Kasenna does have good market presence, other companies have more momentum now.

OKI Introduces Audience Rating System

Oki Electric announced its Audience Rating Information System for IPTV for the Japanese market, which collects viewership data. This system will enable service providers, with the authorization of the viewers, to obtain information about when and which channel and programs are watched.

The system will collect the viewership data in the form of an audience rating library on the user's device, which will then be encrypted, sent to and registered in the database server at the IPTV distribution center. This information will then be printed out as viewership reports which service providers can offer to program producers.

The audience rating library can be embedded in the set-top-boxes or in the TV with an integrated set-top box. Those who have STBs or TVs without the embedded library can connect a home gateway that has the audience rating library to collect viewership data. This system has been tested in IPTV applications that utilize mutli-casting. OKI will add the system to its product lines that includes the OKI MediaServer, the video distribution server for IPTV, plus home gateways and set-top-boxes.

Oki is one of the video on demand suppliers to NTT's IPTV services. Privacy is becoming a large issue with these systems as consumers come to understand what they are and how they are being deployed.