BCE Inc. (Bell Canada) will acquire 100% of CTV, the leading Canadian television, digital media, conventional TV and radio broadcaster, for $1.3 billion from The Woodbridge Company Limited, the Toronto-based holding company of the Thomson family; Ontario Teachers Pension Plan; and Torstar Corporation.
The deal allows Bell to combine a premier video content business with its broadband network capabilities.
CTV operates Canada's No.1 television network with 27 stations across the country; 30 specialty channels, including TSN and RDS, the top English and French specialty channels; premium online video programming and properties such as CTV.ca, TSN.ca, RDS.ca, MuchMusic.com, MTV.ca and TheComedyNetwork.ca; and CHUM Radio, which operates 34 radio stations throughout Canada.
Bell already offers a nationwide DTH video service with about 2 million subscribers. It has a mobile TV offering and is in the process of launching its Bell Fibe IPTV service in major urban centres. Bell TV now represents
approximately 40% of total residential service revenues, surpassing traditional home phone revenues.
Bell promises to accelerate its wireline and wireless (HSPA+) video capabilities with significant new investments in broadband networks, including capital expenditures of almost $3 billion in 2010 alone.
The company said Canada's current regulatory and technological environment allows integrated players to
leverage content ownership for differentiated offers across all three screens, noting that Quebecor, Rogers and Shaw all already own video content businesses as part of their 3 screen strategies.
"Our industry is changing rapidly. Increasing vertical integration across the communications landscape, ongoing
technological advancement and key regulatory developments introduce new opportunities with the
ownership of high-demand content by Bell. Our acquisition of CTV more than levels the playing field in our
increasingly competitive industry," said George Cope, President and CEO of Bell Canada and BCE.
http://www.bce.ca
announced plans to open an R&D lab in Melbourne, Australia. The company has operated its Australian HQ in Melbourne since 2006.
which provides managed, secure virtualized network services to enterprises, filed a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission relating to a proposed initial public offering of shares of its common stock. BofA Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. will serve as joint book-running managers for the offering, with Stifel Nicolaus Weisel and Pacific Crest Securities LLC acting as co-managers.
has selected Nokia Siemens Networks to supply, implement and manage its 3G network in six of the nine circles. Nokia Siemens Networks will provide network planning and project management. It will supply radio and core network technology, and it will also operate the 3G network for three years under a managed services contract. Nokia Siemens Networks will use its own NetAct network management system to monitor and optimize its network performance. Financial terms were not disclosed.
LTE-advanced will leverage carrier aggregation, enhanced antenna, relay, coordinated multi-point Tx/Rx (CoMP) transmission and other key technologies to achieve these rates. ZTE said it expects to introduce commercial LTE-advanced products in 2012. The demonstration occurred at P&T/Expo Comm in Beijing.
has selected a Content Delivery System from Cisco as the backbone for its video content delivery network. The Cisco Content Delivery System (CDS) using medianet technologies can cache content deep in the broadband network and so deliver it much closer to the end user -- avoiding congested areas of the network. Cisco said this, in turn, enables broadcasters to provide video content -- and in the future live TV - with an assured level of service from BT Wholesale all the way to the viewer, providing uninterrupted access even at peak times.
As Australia undergoes the switch from analog to digital free-to-air TV, the Australian government is funding a new satellite service to provide digital television to viewers in remote areas where free-to-air digital TV can't be received by TV antennas. About 247,000 Australian households in these "digital black spots" will benefit from the initiative. The system uses a range of Ericsson head-end equipment including bandwidth-saving MPEG-4 AVC EN8190 HD and EN8130 SD encoders, Reflex statistical multiplexing for channel bitrate allocation and management, and nCompass Control and Monitoring. Deployment starts in December 2010. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.fujitsu.com/global/news/pr/archives/month/2010/20100910-02.html
