Category Archives: Digital Satellite

ICO reiterates opposition to EC S-Band allocation award, continues to ‘assess its options’

Posted by Barry Flynn on May 18, 2009 No comments

Not that it adds that much to the story, but – following the award of the European S-Band frequencies to Solaris Mobile/Inmarsat – ICO, which was passed over, has reiterated its opposition to the whole allocation process – officially known as Decision No. 626/2008/EC.

In a statement released last week, ICO said it was “challenging this process, having initiated legal proceedings in September 2008 in the European Court of First Instance seeking the annulment of Decision No. 626/2008/EC of the European Parliament.”

ICO argues that the Decision – essentially the one that gave rise to the European beauty contest – is illegal and should be annulled “pursuant to Articles 230 and 231 of the Treaty establishing the European Community”. ICO noted that as these legal proceedings had not been completed by the October 2008 deadline to submit applications to the EC to provide mobile satellite services in the S-Band above Europe, it decided to go ahead and file an application anyway, ‘without prejudice.’

Michael Corkery, acting chief executive officer of ICO, is quoted in the statement as saying: “ICO has spent years clearing the S-band worldwide, has an operational satellite using this frequency band and is registered in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Master International Frequency Register (MIFR). We believe the just-concluded EU process jeopardizes years of international cooperation and coordination that has governed satellite communications worldwide.” Corkery concluded that “ICO will continue assessing its options in defending its international legal rights.”

This doesn’t give any clue as to whether ICO will be asking for a judicial review of Ofcom’s proposal to recommend that the ITU allocations referred to above be rescinded, but it’s only got until the end of this week.

Solaris Mobile S-Band mobile satellite services threatened by ‘anomaly’ on Eutelsat W2A bird

Posted by Barry Flynn on May 14, 2009 2 comments

There’s never a dull moment in the continuing European S-Band saga!

Solaris Mobile – the Astra/Eutelsat JV hotly tipped to share the S-Band frequencies with Inmarsat (when the EC finally makes up its mind) – released a statement this morning saying that the W2A satellite carrying the S-Band payload, which was successfully launched on April 3 – has some sort of problem.

Here’s the full text:

“Solaris Mobile and its shareholders Eutelsat Communications and SES Astra announce that the current evaluation of the in-orbit tests of the S-band payload on the W2A satellite launched on April 3 indicate an anomaly which requires further tests. Additional analysis is consequently planned with the satellite’s prime contractor, Thales Alenia Space, in order to identify the cause of the anomaly and to fully assess the extent of the S-band payload’s capability to provide mobile satellite services to the European marketplace. Solaris Mobile remains confident of its ability to meet the commitments made according to the European Selection and Authorisation Process, under which it has applied for S-band spectrum to provide these services. The company is evaluating a range of options to compensate for this situation and expects to make further announcements in due course.”

Regardless of whether the anomaly turns out to be trivial or not, it comes at a sensitive time: as mentioned above, the ‘European Selection and Authorisation Process’ for allocating the S-Band frequencies, which Solaris Mobile wants to use for DVB-SH mobile broadcasting, has yet to formally announce the result of its deliberations.

With one of the other candidates, ICO, pursuing legal action in the European Court of First Instance over the whole procedure at the same time, there’s every prospect of a significant further delay, at least. At worst, Solaris Mobile might get passed over, with the frequencies being awarded to someone else (e.g. Inmarsat plus ICO).

The critical date is May 23rd – the date by which ICO has to decide whether to ask for a judicial review of a previous decision by Ofcom to deprive it of its existing ITU S-Band frequencies or not. This in turn will trigger Ofcom’s decision on whether to go ahead and ask the ITU to relieve ICO of its previous S-Band frequency allocati0ns.

Connected TV will keep you posted…..

**Update**Reuters has just released a story that the EC has today awarded the S-Band frequencies to Solaris Mobile and Inmarsat regardless of the above-mentioned glitch. Possibly the EU announcement was therefore already in the system before the W2A anomaly was known about. So the scene is now set for a possible challenge from ICO….

The trick-mode trigger: a new paradigm for TV advertising in an on-demand world?

Posted by Barry Flynn on April 1, 2009 2 comments

As the traditional TV world migrates to an on-demand environment (‘over-the-top’ or otherwise), the evidence so far has been that where viewers are given the opportunity to, they will generally fast-forward through the ad breaks.

Various strategems have been adopted by broadcasters and advertisers to get round consumer resistance to interruptive advertising, generally involving some sort of implied bargain. For instance, the benefit of being able to make up for having missed a popular programme by viewing it in ‘catch-up’ mode is commonly set against the fact that the ads in the catch-up stream can’t be ‘zapped’. Similarly, if you want to watch an on-demand movie without any commercial breaks interrupting the action, it’s often impossible to skip the ‘pre-roll’ ad welded onto the front of it.

Well, on the evidence of three separate exhibitors at last week’s IPTV World Forum, a new paradigm is evolving. It hasn’t got a name, yet, so let’s invent one: ‘trick-mode triggers’ (you heard it here first).

The idea is to exploit the fact that on-demand viewing allows viewers to interrupt their own viewing by using VCR-like ‘trick modes’ such as pause, rewind and (yes) fast-forward – the very feature causing the zapping issue in the first place.

Connected TV has already mentioned the use of the ‘pause’ function in ANT’s Amazon application, which triggers a window showing ‘contextual’ DVDs or books available to purchase at the Amazon store. However, NDS – the private technology firm owned by the Permira Funds and News Corporation – also featured it when demonstrating the latest version of its Infinite TV technology, which Connected TV reviewed after its first showing at last year’s IBC trade-fair in Amsterdam.

Geoff Todd, NDS’s director of sales and new business initiatives, referred to it as ‘on-pause’ advertising. In the example he demonstrated, pressing ‘pause’ during the replay of a cookery programme created a Flash-based wrapper around the video advertising a relevant ingredient. In fact, this type of trick-mode related feature has been implicit in Infinite TV’s targeted advertising platform from inception, although the capability wasn’t emphasised at IBC.

The platform allows the effectiveness of different types of targeted ads (e.g. ‘pre-roll’ versus ‘on-pause’) to be compared, and their subsequent application refined. “[Infinite TV tells you] which kinds of ads have been consumed,” said Todd. “If trick-mode works better, you can pull the pre-roll or mid-roll ad.”

The third example at the show came from set-top box manufacturer ADB, which was showing Stream Group’s Solocoo online TV portal being accessed from one of its hybrid DTT-IP hybrid models.

In the demonstration shown, the trigger wasn’t the result of trick-mode use, but instead arose when the viewer decided to use the familiar left-and-right arrows on the remote control to check what was currently playing on adjacent channels, using the mini-EPG at the bottom of the screen display. At this point, the mini-EPG displayed a YouTube icon, which when the red button was pressed, offered a choice of relevant YouTube video-clips to play back. The relevant factor, however, is that the call-to-action was displayed when the viewer chose to interrupt their own viewing.

As we have noted here before, interruptive advertising may be something of an aberration – one reason viewers dispense with it when they can. But placing advertising or other calls-to-action in the breaks viewers create for themselves as part of their on-demand viewing experience could well prove to be much more acceptable – particularly when the trigger invokes contextual promotional material.

(NB NDS is a sponsor of the Connected TV blog)

Ofcom postpones advice to ITU recommending cancellation of ICO S-Band assignments

Posted by Barry Flynn on March 20, 2009 1 comment

US satellite operator ICO’s furious reaction to Ofcom’s decision to advise the ITU to cancel its S-Band assignments (see here) has resulted in the UK regulator backing off – if only for the moment.

Yesterday, Ofcom posted a note on its site saying that ICO had followed up with a letter to the regulator referring to its right to seek a judicial review of the decision.

“In light of this Ofcom considers that it is appropriate for it to refrain from writing to the ITU before the time period for ICO to apply for a judicial review expires, which is 23 May 2009,” its statement ran.

However, the damage to ICO’s EU S-Band bid may already have been done – if the EU was taking ICO’s bid seriously in the first place. There is widespread industry speculation that the EU is poised to announce that the pan-European S-Band award will go jointly to Solaris Mobile and Inmarsat.