Category: Digital TV players
Vedomosti reports that Orion Express has approached MTS, VimpelCom and Megafon and that Fund Service Bank-backed STK Soyuz, a 50% shareholder in the platform, has held talks with all three.
However, according to Yuri Khitrov, the owner of the remaining 50%, no firm offers have yet been received.
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Fast Lane Ventures announced last week it has agreed to sell its stake in the TV and online teleshopping company Shopping Live to the German group Home Shopping Europe for an undisclosed amount.
A 24-hour channel, Shopping Live offers live programming up to five hours per day. The channel is currently represented on such major satellite TV operators as Kontinent TV and Tricolor TV as well as on the cable TV channel of MTS, a leading Russian mobile operator.
In an unusual diversification bid, St. Petersburg Cable TV, a major northwest Russian telecom also known as TKT, has launched a security service that fends off domestic trouble for homeowners from a distance. The Your Intelligent House package monitors a residence when the owner is away, alerting him to any household emergency or unwanted intrusion.
The telecom’s move could prove a major leg-up toward winning over a new market of homeowners and apartment renters in an upmarket software and hardware segment for advanced household security that is still in its infancy in Russia.
The Russian DTH platform Orion Express faces a major obstacle in its expansion plans. According to Vedomosti, a decision on whether the platform can use frequencies on the Horizons 2 satellite, which is owned by Intelsat, has been postponed until a meeting of the General Radio Frequency Centre (GFRC), called at the initiative of the initiative of the Russian Space Agency (Roskosmos).
CTC Media, a leading Russian media company listed on the NASDAQ, announced last week an agreement with GlobeCast to broadcast the international Russian-language version of CTC, “CTC-International,” via GlobeCast’s Hot Bird 8 satellite.
A subsidiary of France Telecom, GlobeCast is a global provider of content management and worldwide transmission services for professional broadcast delivery. Hot Bird 8 currently covers both western and eastern Europe as well as a number of countries in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.
Fiber-optic telecommunication provider Transtelecom (TTK) is preparing to launch cable TV services next spring in several Russian regions.
“We don’t focus on one technology exclusively,” news agency RIA Novosti quoted TTK President Artem Kudryavtsev as saying. “Depending on the local situation in each region, we may use analog cable TV as well as the digital DVB-C standard and, in a later stage, IPTV.”
Eurosport has extended its partnership with MTS, a leading Russian mobile operator, thereby providing the latter’s mobile TV subscribers with access to Eurosport and Eurosport 2.
In a statement, MTS says it has one of the most developed 3G networks in Russia, covering around 80% of the population and that the number of users of its mobile TV service has increased seven times over the last six months.
Interest in content delivery networks (CDNs) is growing amongst leading mobile operators in Russia. According to Russian publications AKTR and ComNews.ru, VimpelCom is currently looking for an equipment supplier for a CDN and expects to finalise a tender in the first half of this year.
MTS is meanwhile using one operated by the company NGENIX but plans to eventually build its own, while MegaFon has operated its own network on a commercial basis since last December.
MegaFon, a major Russian mobile operator, made a further step last Friday towards business diversification and regional expansion by acquiring Yugratel, a broadband Internet and cable TV provider operating in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous District of Western Siberia.
Yugratel was sold through an auction sale by the local authorities for 2.4 billion rubles, or approximately $76 million.
Pay-TV penetration in Russia will almost double from 40% this year to 73% at the end of 2016, said Pavel Basov, the general director of the country’s leading DTH platform Tricolor TV.
Speaking at Intercom 2011, a major industry event, Basov added that, by the end of 2016, cable and IPTV would account for 48% of the pay-TV market and satellite TV for 52%, the Russian press reported.
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