Adsmart comes to Sky Italia

Sky is to launch its targeted advertising service Adsmart in the Italian market during the late summer.

Sky Media’s Daniele Ottier told Prima Comunicazione it would be a “real revolution”.

Advertisers will be able to target around 3 million of the 4.7 million installed base in the country. Ottier said advertisers would be able to reach geographically defined areas and determine in advance the objectives of a particular campaign.

Adsmart has been available in the UK since January 2014.

Zenterio wins landmark deal with Megacable

Zenterio wins landmark deal with Megacable – Mexico’s largest MSO

• Zenterio will roll out its independent Zenterio OS and HTML5 UI framework JetUI on both legacy set-top boxes and on all new set-top boxes being deployed by the major LatAm operator

STOCKHOLM — Zenterio, a leading TV technology and services provider, has won a major deal with Megacable, Mexico’s largest multiple-system operator (MSO), to enhance Megacable’s existing TV platform and generate additional revenues from new IPTV and OTT applications.

The deal with Megacable is Zenterio’s first direct deployment with an operator of this magnitude in the LatAm market and it shows the global appeal of an independent operating system as well as the importance of being able to offer a customizable UI that can be adapted to local requirements.

Zenterio OS will run on all new set-top-boxes being deployed and will be used to migrate several different legacy boxes in order to harmonize the operational environment. Making full use of Zenterio’s JetUI framework will also enable Megacable to provide a unified, attractive and intuitive user experience across all devices. The new TV platform means that Megacable diversifies its distribution techniques and adds IPTV and OTT applications to its offering.

Jorgen Nilsson, CEO, Zenterio, said: “Harmonizing the software environment means that the TV operator will cut cost on operations, maintenance and support, and that is a major improvement in and of itself, but the most important thing is that having the same OS on every box also means that you only need one integration for any new service. As the TV industry undergoes a rapid transformation, operators must meet new demand, create new services and revenue streams, and cut time to market to remain competitive. In addition, this creates a great opportunity to take a leading role in defining this change, so we are very excited to partner with Megacable in Mexico.”

The completed TV platform, including Zenterio OS and Zenterio’s HTML UI framework, will run on six different STB models initially (three with DOCSIS and three with Ethernet) and will support Live DVB-C, hybrid OTT, adaptive streaming, network PVR and time shift as well as start-over TV, catch-up TV, video on demand and social sharing.

The project is part of a major transformation of the Megacable offering, marking the transformation from being a cable operator to a hybrid operator by adding IPTV. The full scope also entails changing out the back-end, the CAS provider and launching exciting new OTT services. The first launch of these new services is expected in early 2017 and will mean an improved TV experience for all of Megacable’s almost 3 million subscribers.

Henrique Yamuni, CEO, Megacable, said: “Through our agreement with Zenterio, we will be able to provide a superior user experience and make it easier and more intuitive for our subscribers to find and enjoy their favorite shows. The solution will also give us a unified user experience across all platforms and the opportunity to monetize additional content models. At Megacable we strive to be a cutting edge company offering innovative solutions to our subscribers and we are certain that Zenterio will help us towards achieving this.”

The Mexican pay TV market is growing rapidly, adding 13% year-on-year to a total of 18.2 million subscribers, and in 2017 it is expected to become the third largest market in the Americas after the U.S. and Brazil, according to Quantum Web. Megacable is growing faster still and increased its subscribers by 17% year-on-year to a total of 2.98 million.

Inspur Ericsson Cable TV China Infrastructure Set Top Box Smart Home

BEIJING — Inspur Group (hereinafter referred to as “Inspur”) and Ericsson, the global leading supplier of communication technology and services, jointly announced on July 13 that they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

The MoU builds upon the existing cooperation between the two parties that dates back to 2002, when Ericsson and Inspur established a joint venture to develop radio technology and products. This collaboration is another major milestone in the cooperation between the two companies. With this new agreement, the two companies will expand their collaboration into new business areas such as cloud infrastructure, TV and media, and the Internet of Things (IoT).

In cloud infrastructure, Inspur and Ericsson will test and verify the compatibility and performance of selected Ericsson software solutions related to areas such as Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), IoT, OSS/BSS and cloud on Inspur’s hardware platform, and evaluate joint proof-of-concept (PoC) opportunities.

In addition, the two companies will align standardization and participation in open forums such as ODCC and OPNFV, as well as explore possibilities for joint PoCs in areas such as 5G core networks, NFV, and management and orchestration (MANO) with operators and enterprise LTE customers.

In TV and Media, the cooperation aims to launch a total solution that enables the next generation of media cloud, and will start by integrating Ericsson’s MediaFirst solution with Inspur’s advantage of cloud computing. Inspur has agreed to customize its digital set-top box and other terminals to meet the requirements of Ericsson and its strategic customers.

With global industries rapidly embracing the transformational power of ICT, Inspur and Ericsson will provide joint development of IoT solutions for various vertical industries, and collaborate on future smart city projects, including smart parking, green energy, smart transportation, smart community, smart home, smart building and e-government solutions.

Furthermore, Inspur and Ericsson will partner to design and build data centers and communication infrastructure to address China’s “One Belt, One Road” markets, while in the global market, the two parties will explore strategic partnerships.

Grupo Televisa results for second-quarter 2016

MEXICO CITY — Grupo Televisa, S.A.B. (NYSE:TV; BMV: TLEVISA CPO; “Televisa” or “the Company”), today announced results for second-quarter 2016. The results have been prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (“IFRS”).

Sky

Sky Second-quarter sales increased by 18.1% to Ps.5,580.7 million compared with Ps.4,724.5 million in second-quarter 2015. The increase was driven by accelerated growth in the subscriber base in Mexico. The number of net active subscribers increased by 121,235 during the quarter to 7,803,614 as of June 30, 2016, compared with 6,887,428 as of June 30, 2015. Sky ended the quarter with 201,356 subscribers in Central America and the Dominican Republic.

For the first six months of the year, Sky added 519,452 net subscribers, more than double the 249,396 net subscribers added in the first six months of 2015.

Cable

Second-quarter sales increased by 12.9% to Ps.7,802.1 million compared with Ps.6,909.7 million in second-quarter 2015 driven by growth in all of our cable platforms. Voice and data revenue generating units, or RGUs, grew 28.6% and 18.5% compared with second-quarter 2015, respectively, and video RGUs grew 7.7%.

The following table sets forth the breakdown of RGUs per service type for our Cable segment as of June 30, 2016 and 2015.

RGUs            2Q’16      2Q’15
----------  ---------  ---------
Video       4,219,906  3,916,512
Broadband   3,258,061  2,748,401
Voice       2,051,434  1,595,761
----------  ---------  ---------
Total RGUs  9,529,401  8,260,674

More: 2Q 2016 results (pdf)

Médiamétrie releases France TV market survey

LEVALLOIS — Médiamétrie has released results from its Médiamat’Thématik survey of the French television market. According to the survey, out of a total of 58.249 million TV households in the country, 43.776 million (75.2%) receive their TV service via satellite, cable or over DSL.

IPTV has the largest share with 28.533 million customers, followed by satellite with 15.220 million. Cable TV makes up the remainder at 5.611 million.

Out of the total, 12.032 million take a pay TV service, with 9.095 million subscribing to Canalsat either via satellite or over ADSL, and 3.063 million subscribing to cable (either analogue or digital).

The survey took place between December 28, 2015 and June 12, 2016 and covered 8,930 people aged 4 and above living in 3,690 households.

9 INDIAN COMPANIES TO PRODUCE STBS WITH ICAS COSTING LESS THAN $0.5

The Indian’s Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) has identified 9 private companies in total to produce set top boxes equipped with Indian Conditional Access System (iCAS), giving the consumer the choice over the pay channels beamed into his home.

Although a time-limit for the production of the STBs for the growing demands of boxes was not declared, it has been said that it could occur at the same time with the deadline of Digital Addressable System (DAS) in December 2016. Around 70-80 million of boxes are estimated to be needed in the III & IV phase of the digital migration process.

The companies which have been identified are Melbon-Millenium Technologies (Delhi-based), Solid-KMTS Engineering Pvt. Ltd, MyBox Technologies Pvt. Ltd, C-Net Communications India Pvt. Ltd, Smasher Communications Pvt. Ltd (Bangalore-based), Velankani Electronics Pvt. Ltd, Exza Info system, ABS Productions Pvt. Ltd and Videocon (Aurangabad-based).

According to the agreement signed, developed iCAS will be made available to the operators at 0.5USD or less for a period of 3 years. Over 25,000 STBs with iCAS have already been distributed across the country during the month of December last till January this year.

Orange outage in Poland

Orange has suffered a massive outage in many parts of Poland.

As a result, report several local news outlets, many of its customers have been unable to make calls or access the internet.

Company spokesman Wojtek Jabczynski sent a tweet late afternoon on Thursday (July 7) apologising for the incident and saying that it was working to fix the issue as quickly as possible.

The outage began around 17.00 on July 7 and was most pronounced in Warsaw. However, it was also widely felt in a number of other locations including Katowice, Poznan, Szczecin and the tri-city of Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot.

Orange is the incumbent telco in Poland and the country’s leading provider of IPTV services.

The outage was reportedly resolved at 02.00 local time on Friday, July 8.

VGTRK to restructure

The Russian public broadcaster VGTRK (RTR) plans to reorganise its information departments.

As a result, reports Kommersant, the Directorate of Information Programmes (DIP) of Rossiya 1 will be combined with the information service of Rossiya 24.

The joint directorate will be headed by Irina Filina, and Yevgney Revenko, the former head of DIP, will leave the state holding to pursue a career in politics with the United Russia party.

In effect, the move will see the abolition of DIP at Rossiya 1.

Arris announces warrant agreement with Comcast

Arris International has entered into a warrant agreement with Comcast Cable.

The warrants provide Comcast with the opportunity to acquire ordinary shares of Arris based on specific sales targets for 2016 and 2017.

Arris provides Comcast with a range of technologies for its video (including the X1 platform), high-speed data and voice services, wireless gateways supporting the delivery of Comcast’s fastest in-home WiFi service, and networking and other hardware equipment.

“Comcast continues to be a strong strategic partner for Arris” said Bob Stanzione, Arris chairman and CEO.

“We believe the warrants demonstrate Comcast’s strong commitment to Arris and its products and represent an opportunity for us to further grow our relationship.”

Kudelski Group acquires NexGuard Labs

The Kudelski Group has acquired 100% of NexGuard Labs BV (formerly Civolution BV), a compamny specialising in digital content watermarking solutions.

This move expands the Kudelski Group’s portfolio of end-to-end content protection security solutions, enriching the existing offer to content owners and pay-TV operators.

NexGuard Labs BV, based in the Netherlands with offices in Los Angeles, New York, London, Dubai and Rennes (France), is a provider of forensic watermarking technology and solutions for protecting media content against illicit redistribution. It offers a portfolio of industry-leading digital watermarking tools to help media content owners, rights holders and distributors protect and manage their assets. The portfolio consists of digital watermarking tools for Pre-Release, Digital Cinema, B2B and B2C distribution.

Civolution was formed in October 2008 as a spin-off of Royal Philips Electronics. In August 2008, Philips Content Identification, a business unit of Philips Electronics, assumed full ownership of its joint venture Teletrax. The combined entity was spun out of Philips in October giving birth to Civolution.

In July 2009, Civolution took over the Software and Technology Solution from Thomson (Thomson STS), formerly Nextamp.

In December 2014, WPP’s Kantar Media acquired Civolution’s SyncNow audio watermarking unit supporting Audience Measurement and Second Screen synchronization applications.

Following the Kantar Media acquisition, Civolution announced the launch of two separate business units, NexGuard and Teletrax. NexGuard is the world leader in watermarking technology and solutions for protecting media content against illicit redistribution.

André Kudelski, chairman and CEO, Kudelski Group said: “the acquisition of NexGuard further strengthens our content protection offering and represents a key milestone in executing our growth strategy in security.”

ER Telecom secures funding

The Russian cable operator ER Telecom has issued bonds worth a total of R3 billion (€42.2 million).

ComNews reports they have a maturity of three years, with each one having a nominal value of R1,000. Generating 12.75% a year, they will see the company’s debt load become much higher than the industry average.

Funds from the bonds will be used to increase the scale of ER Telecom’s business, both through organic growth and the launch of new products, along with M&As. In total, ER Telecom has allocated up to R30 billion for this expansion.

Quoting analysts, ComNews says that there has recently been growing interest in issuing bonds by telcos in the Russian market, MegaFon, for instance, has approved one worth R80 billion.

In the case of ER Telecom, its options of obtaining a loan from a bank were limited and it had no plans for an IPO.

StarTimes employs Eutelsat for DTT in Africa

StarTimes, an operator of digital TV networks in Africa, and Eutelsat Communications have concluded new multi-year agreements to accelerate roll-out of DTT across Africa.

StarTimes uses satellites to deliver its multi-channel TV platform to over seven million homes in 13 Sub-Saharan African countries and is gearing up to expand into DRC Congo and Zambia in August. The platform transmits over 200 channels, including international channels, regional and country-focused channels as well as StarTimes’ own branded content.

Content is offered both on a Free-to-View and pay-TV basis, with exclusive programming including frontline events such as the Bundesliga and the 2016 Copa America.

StarTimes has renewed capacity contracts on two Eutelsat satellites as well as agreements for uplinking services provided by a partner teleport operated by STN, in Slovenia. In anticipation of continued expansion of Africa’s TV market, StarTimes has also secured extra capacity and plans to scale up further by the end of the year. This expanded portfolio equips StarTimes to host more services, uplink channels from Europe and Africa and provide the highest levels of service continuity.

“StarTimes and Eutelsat are long-term strategic partners,” said StarTimes group chairman and president Pang Xinxing.

“We rely on Eutelsat’s advanced satellite communication technology to make our signals available throughout the African continent. Going forward, we will continue to work with Eutelsat to provide the best digital TV service to our African customers.”

Rodolphe Belmer, Eutelsat CEO added: “Eutelsat is fully engaged in the transformation of Africa’s broadcasting landscape and is proud to work with the players who are bringing the benefits of digital TV to viewers across the continent. In leveraging diversified satellite resources we can help StarTimes achieve its ambition to reach 30 million homes in 30 African countries by 2018.”

New exec joins Viaccess Orca

The Orange Group subsidiary Viaccess-Orca has appointed Cedric Hardouin as its executive VP of research and development.

In his new role, he will be responsible for managing Viaccess-Orca’s development teams in France and Israel, with a focus on rolling out next-generation security and engagement solutions for some of the world’s largest operators.

Hardouin has held executive positions with several technology companies, including Canal+ Technologies, where he led the organisation’s middleware activities. He comes to Viaccess-Orca from the Kudelski Group, where he was responsible for engineering at the subsidiary SmarDTV. Previously Hardouin also served as CTO of LogiWays.

Commenting on the development, Paul Molinier, CEO of Viaccess-Orca, said: “We are delighted to announce that Cedric is joining our executive team.

“With his long history in both CAS and middleware, we believe he is the right choice to lead our R&D efforts and drive our technology to even greater heights.”

Hardouin added: “Joining Viaccess-Orca is an honour for me, and I look forward to learning from the highly experienced management team, which has a solid vision for a very bright future.

“This, combined with the enthusiasm and innovative spirit shown company wide, made making the move to Viaccess-Orca an easy decision.”

Nagra to secure Nigerian DTT

Nigerian digital platform Inview is to use a cardless security system from Nagra as it looks to convert 30 million TV households to the digital format.

In addition to being technical and operational advisors for the National Broadcasting Commission, Inview is providing set-top box software and integrated broadcast services for Nigeria’s digital terrestrial and satellite networks. Nagra will deploy a variety of anyCAST content security solutions to secure Free-to-View, pay-TV and Push VOD services using a variety of cardless and DRM-based security clients, all managed by a single anyCAST Security Services Platform.

“NAGRA is a world leader in delivering secure digital media solutions, so we are delighted to be partnering with them to successfully and securely deploy the Nigerian digital switchover platform to 30 million TV households,” commented Nick Markham, Chairman of Inview.

“We are proud to be partnering with Inview in providing a national digital TV terrestrial and satellite system to the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) in Nigeria and help them pave the way for a new generation of digital TV services in a region where consumers demand for new services and premium entertainment is growing,” said Thierry Legrand, Nagra SVP Sales EMEA. “Our broad range of security solutions allows us to protect any content over any network type and to any device, and provide a flexible and tightly integrated platform that enables many business models and provides a solid foundation for future value-added services. We look forward to supporting NBC in this new endeavour.”

Inview is drawing on the suite of security systems provided by Nagra under the anyCAST banner. This includes the ability to shift to a card-based system at a later stage should this be required.

In Nigeria, Nagra will deploy the anyCAST Enable and Protect cardless clients, which are both based on Nagra On-Chip Security (NOCS3) across a wide range of silicon and set-top boxes. Enable provides basic protection for Free-to-View and low-value services, while Protect runs fully within the NOCS3 hardware.

Nagra points out this provides a level of protection that independent security auditors have rated above many smart card systems that rely on off-the-shelf smart card hardware and standard ETSI key ladders.

The service launched in Jos on 30 April 2016 and digital switchover is scheduled to roll out nationally over the next two years.

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Forthnet inks ZTE deal

Forthnet has signed a cooperative agreement with ZTE in order for the two parties to compile a business plan for the funding and development of next-generation-access network in Greece.

The deal was reached during the visit of the PM of Greece, Alexis Tsipras, to the ZTE Research and Development Center in Shanghai, between Deng Chao, ZTE Hellas CEO, and Panos Papadopoulos, Forthnet CEO.

Forthnet is a pay-TV operator and the leading provider of triple play services in Greece.

European pay-TV in the hands of the few

Just six pay-TV groups hold half of the European Union’s pay-TV subscribers, according to a new report from the
European Audiovisual Observatory.

Deutsche Telekom, Liberty Global, Orange, Sky, Viasat and Vivendi are cited as the leading groups.

The Observatory says there are 13 pan-European broadcasters that (directly or through subsidiaries) own the significant well-known channel brands and pay TV channels available throughout Europe. Nine of these are linked to the major US television and film production groups.

Pan-European broadcast media groups can be distinguished between those with a “multi-country” broadcast strategy providing many important free to air channels, and those that have a more “pan-European” strategy with well-known channel brands available throughout Europe. Nine broadcasting groups are analysed in this report.

While TV audience markets have become slightly less concentrated between 2011 and 2014, from a sample of 30 European countries, the two main broadcasting groups gather on average 51% of the audience, and the 3 main groups 64%, with strong variations between countries.

The pan-European brand channel groups and the major pay TV channels (film and sport) are owned by 13 major groups and their subsidiaries (21st Century Fox, AMC Networks, Bonnier, Discovery Communications, NBC Universal, Scripps Networks, Sony Corporation, Time Warner, United Media Group, Viacom, Viasat, Vivendi, and Walt Disney). Nine of these companies are subsidiaries of the major US media groups.