ITV

Tag: ADSL

  • Al Jazeera International launches Wednesday; not available in India

    Al Jazeera International launches Wednesday; not available in India

    MUMBAI: There’s just a day left for the official launch of Al Jazeera International, the English language sibling of the sometimes controversial Arabic language channel Al Jazeera.

    Al Jazeera International will kick off its inaugural broadcast from its headquarters in Doha, Qatar at 12 GMT tomorrow.

    In English-language markets, the channel will beam down from the Astra and Eurobird satellites to DSat homes in the UK; the Globecast platform in the US; Optus in Australia; and foreign-language platform Orcus in New Zealand, informs an official release.

    Interestingly, though India has been identified as a potential market, the channel will not be available in the country after the Union Home Ministry informed that the Qatar-based Arab news channel will not be allowed to register an office in India, thereby restricting its plans to beam into the country.

    The government had asked the channel to go off air six months ago on account of not conforming to the downlinking guidelines by 10 May. Al Jazeera had submitted an application to the company affairs ministry for registration of a company in India, as stipulated by the government for channels uplinking from overseas and seeking to downlink into the country.

    While the I&B ministry cleared the application, the home ministry, however, declined the application citing security considerations. According to a media report, the ministry, in a letter dated 14 September, specified that the company should not be permitted to deal in the business of providing news.

    Earlier this year, information and broadcasting minister PR Dasmunsi had clarified that the reason Arab television channels like Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabia, QTV had gone off air was because they had not applied for downlink permission in India.

    Broadcast across the globe, Al Jazeera English will far exceed its original launch target of 40 million cable and satellite homes. It will be distributed across all continents throughout the world and in addition to cable and satellite will be available on broadband IPTV, ADSL, terrestrial and mobile phone platforms.

    Not surprisingly the channel has got a very limited distribution in the US after it was “blanked” by big satellite players like News Corp’s DirecTV and Charlie Ergen’s Echostar and cable giants like Comcast and Time Warner. Al Jazeera English will only be available to subscribers of the GlobeCast Network – a subsidiary of France Telecom that carries channels from all parts of the world and services mainly non-Americans.

    Among the European satellite and cable platforms to carry the channel are Canal Sat and TPS in France, Kabel Deutschland and Kabel BW in Germany, HK Broadband in Hong Kong, YES TV in Israel, Sky Italia, Astro Malaysia, Canal Digital in The Netherlands, ORCUS in New Zealand, Canal Digitaal in Nordic Region and Sky Guide 514 in United Kingdom.

  • Global cable TV infrastructure market driven by three-screen quest, fixed mobile convergence

    Global cable TV infrastructure market driven by three-screen quest, fixed mobile convergence

    MUMBAI: The worldwide cable TV industry is in a race to provision a ‘three-screen’service that starts with HDTV sets, maps over to broadband-connected PCs, and follows subscribers around during the day on cell phones or other portable devices.

    A report by In-Stat notes that as a result, the high-tech market research firm expects strong, continued growth in cable TV infrastructure equipment with sales rising from about $925.4 million during 2006 to more than $2.1 billion in 2010.

    In-Stat analyst Gerry Kaufhold says, “The cable TV industry is working diligently to connect all the infrastructure dots in the race to provision a three-screen telecommunications service. System operators are building out Super Headends and upgrading Local Headends to provide the economies of scale needed to provide the greatest number of services, over the greatest geographical reach, at the lowest possible cost. Fixed Mobile Convergence, or FMC, will become a fast-growing market for cable operators, and they will disrupt the cell phone industry.”

    Recent research by In-Stat found the following

    High Definition TV services and Video-on-Demand are expanding, driving plant upgrades for improved Gigabit Ethernet video switches, Switched Digital Video (SDV), more QAM channels, and widening deployments of 1 GHz Final Mile equipment.

    Modular Cable Modem Termination Systems (Modular CMTS) and wide band cable modems are being brought into play to upgrade High Speed Data services to compete against telephone companies’ ADSL, VDSL, and Fiber-to-the-Home.

    Comcast, Cox, Time-Warner and Advance/Newhouse have a joint venture with Sprint Nextel that will begin offering cable-branded cellular phone services later this year in the US. Later on, Fixed Mobile Convergence will add innovative video services and wireless extensions to the Cable TV infrastructure, and disrupt the cell phone market.

    The cable TV industry is rapidly deploying Voice-over-IP services.

  • Broadband subscription in the US up 33 per cent: FCC

    Broadband subscription in the US up 33 per cent: FCC

    MUMBAI: US media watchdog The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released new data on high-speed connections to the Internet in the US.

    High-speed Internet subscriptions soared 33 per cent last year to 50.2 million line. 42.9 million served primarily residential end users. Cable modem service represented 57.5 per cent of these lines while 40.5 per cent were asymmetric DSL (ADSL) connections, 0.3 per cent were symmetric DSL (SDSL) or traditional wireline connections, 0.5 per cent were fiber connections to the end user premises and 1.2 per cent used other types of technology including satellite, terrestrial fixed or mobile wireless (on a licensed or unlicensed basis), and electric power line.

    The increase in ADSL lines exceeded the increase in cable modem connections. ADSL increased by 3.2 million lines during the second half of 2005 compared to an increase of 1.6 million lines for cable modem service. For the full year, ADSL increased by 5.7 million lines compared to an increase of 4.2 million lines for cable modem service.

    DSL is typically less expensive than cable Internet service but offers slower download speeds.

    The US is ranked 12th in the world for broadband subscribers behind countries including Iceland, South Korea and Japan, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s most recent rankings.

  • Asian VOD broadcaster Anytime signs distribution deal in Taiwan

    Asian VOD broadcaster Anytime signs distribution deal in Taiwan

    MUMBAI: The Asian video on demand (VOD) channel Anytime has reached a distribution deal in Taiwan with the interactive broadband platform TDMC.

    TDMC TV chairman Zhong Zhen says, “The deal gives TDMC TV customers a variety of content from the Hollywood studios over a secure ADSL broadband connection to a set-top box. The channel launches in Taiwan this month.

    “Anytime has output deals with more Hollywood studios and Asian content creators than any other video on-demand channel. The new Anytime channel on TDMC TV will give viewers in Taiwan easy access to the most popular, up-to-date entertainment, when they want it.”

    The Singapore-based Anytime has existing carriage deals in Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand, and the rights to license into 14 territories in Asia Pacific. Shareholders include CPE Holdings (Sony), Fox Media Services, Warner Bros. Entertainment, YTC Group, the Macquarie Bank Group and US based Coote/Hayes Productions.