DELIVERY
Selected by IPTV to expand into the European market is Arqiva, who recently acquired two teleports and fiber networks in the U.S. offering direct access to Arqiva’s distribution capabilities within the United Kingdom and Europe. Simon Thrush, the company’s Senior Vice President and head of the firm’s U.S. operations, said, “We are now positioned as the major international gateway to Europe for American broadcasters. Our ability to take content from the US market and directly distribute it within Europe allows us to offer customers faster and simpler implementation times and more cost effective services.”
Once the content leaves the IPTV facilities in Santa Monica, Arqiva handles all elements of the onward distribution. From their teleport in Los Angeles, the content is delivered by fiber directly to one of their many Eurobird mutiplexes in the United Kingdom. The content then appears as part of the Sky direct-to-home (DTH) platform in the U.K. on Channel 670. Customers only have to deal with one entity for distribution of their content outside of the U.S., rather than multiple parties—Winchester, United Kingdom
CONTENT
TiVo Inc. [NASDAQ: TIVO] and NBC Universal (NBCU) have entered into a multi-year strategic partnership to leverage the strong content brands of NBCU with the advertising, promotional and audience research capabilities enabled by TiVo DVRs. As part of the agreement, NBC Universal’s 14 television networks and 10 NBC owned-and-operated TV stations will be able to sell TiVo Interactive Tags in combination with other NBC products and will also subscribe to TiVo’s Stop||Watch second-by-second commercial ratings service. The announcement was made today by Tom Rogers, President and CEO, TiVo and Mike Pilot, ork, New York
DELIVERY
Back on October 23rd, Verizon introduced a new, symmetrical Verizon FiOS Internet service for consumers, featuring an upload and download speed of up to 20 Mbps. FiOS (Fiber Optic Service) is a Fiber To The Premises (FTTP) telecom service with Verizon being the first, major US carrier to offer broadband Internet access using this technology. The service was first available to customers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Now Verizon is launching similar symmetrical FiOS services in the 13 other states served by its fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network.
In Florida, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Verizon now offers the option of a FiOS Internet service with downstream and upstream connections of up to 20 Mbps. In California, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Washington, the company has added a new FiOS Internet service with downstream and upstream connections of up to 15 Mbps. As consumers with ever-growing collections of photos, music, video and other data want to quickly and easily store and protect their files, the symmetrical FiOS services include a comprehensive Internet security suite plus one GB (gigabyte) of network-based backup, both at no additional charge. Customers who subscribe to the new Internet service can upgrade their backup to as much as 50 GB at competitive rates. Simutaneously, Verizon has increased the upload speed of its fastest FiOS Internet services and can offer consumers downstream/upstream connections of either up to 50 Mbps/20 Mbps or up to 30 Mbps/15 Mbps, depending upon the state where the service is sold. FiOS Info—New York, New York
digiBITS…
DELIVERY—Peer-to-peer (P2P) networking is becoming more and more in favor as the Internet becomes more and more saturated with video traffic. P2P is a form of file sharing which finds users trading files with each other, versus downloading them from a centralized server. Each user can see the files that every other connected user has to share, using their own computer’s processing power rather than relying on remote serving. To prove the point, Akami has apparently revealed, to a selected few, their own P2P service. Initially it’ll only be for HTTP delivery with a corresponding reduction in pricing than is usual for content delivered traffic. Imagine, if a company as well respected as Akami is considering P2P, others may well engage this technology as well—and rather quickly, at that! After all, Akami operates a global platform of thousands of servers to help the Internet withstand the crush of daily requests for interactive content, transactions and apps—billions of interactions, each and every day.
CONTENT—Electronic Arts Inc. has made it known that SimCity Societies is available for mobile phones starting this month in Europe, and soon to follow in North America. Create and manage your own metropolis in this versatile city-building game designed so that every decision influences the look, feel and success of each society. The mobile version allows players to not only construct the cities they desire, but also create unique cultures, societal behaviors and environments. SimCity Societies for cell phones welcomes new players to the SimCity franchise with casual ‘on-the-go’ gameplay perfectly suited for mobile. For SimCity fans they will find that the true benefit is in the game’s depth and the complexity to maximize the efficiency of their city. The SimCity franchise is one of the most popular PC gaming franchises in history, having sold more than 17 million games worldwide to date since the SimCity launch in 1989. Subsequent base game releases include SimCity 2000 (1989), SimCity 3000 (1989) and SimCity 4 (2003). SimCity Societies on PC shipped to retails stores across North America and Europe on 13th November 2007—Foster City, California
Harris Corporation has named broadcast industry expert Richard Scott vice president, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) operations for Harris Broadcast Communications. Scott will be responsible for continuing to grow the broadcast division’s presence throughout the region. Before joining Harris, Scott was senior vice president, systems and technology services, EMEA, at Ascent Media, one of the world’s largest broadcast systems integrators. Prior to that, he spent five years as vice president and managing director of EMEA for Pinnacle Systems, seven years as director at Sony Corporation and eight years as technical director at Panasonic—Cincinnati, Ohio
DELIVERY—There’s a new IPTV service entering Italy next month… the Italian telco WIND is partnering with Fastweb and Telecom Italia’s Alice Home TV service with an all Sky Italia channels offering. More channels will come online later. The end-to-end 3xplay solution turnkey solution is provided by Alcatel. The STB will be a Motorola brand with a 160GB hard drive, with exclusive distribution for this model for Italian customers.
