Website: Rapid TV News

Spain’s telcos are in court over non-payment of a new tax designed to compensate public broadcaster RTVE for its cessation of advertisements.

Since the start of this year, Spain’s national public broadcaster RTVE has no longer carried advertisements.

But it has to be financed some way so the government has imposed a new tax not just on commercial broadcasters but also on telecommunications operators.

The amount the telcos owe altogether amounts to some €126 million.

This would be the first payment of the 0.9% tax of the total incomes of Telefónica, Movistar, Vodafone, Orange, Ono and Jazztel for the first half of last year.

The telcos appealed to the European Commission over the tax but had their claims turned down.

The case continues.

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Website: Rapid TV News
On April 2nd Spain’s national analogue switch off took place.

This means the country’s 46 million inhabitants are no longer able to view analogue terrestrial television any longer.

But as many people haven’t adapted their collective antennas or have yet to buy a DTT box they’re rushing to the shops and phoning installers to do the work.

This situation is similar to that of the arrival of private TV channels in this country some 12 years ago when the installers couldn’t cope with all the work.

Apart from that now it’s time to develop quality contents because most of the strictly digital channels offer old or low quality programming.

The other problem is that some of them have rented their space to teleshopping companies which is illegal because the DTT rules demand quality content.

But the authorities have done little to enforce this rules to date.

According to the Association of Electronic and Telecommunications Industry (ASIMELEC) the DTT process “has been a success”.

According to the association’s latest figures the DTT signals give technical coverage to 98.13% of the population, and as at February 83.6% of the country’s homes were already connected to the new television signals.

Sales of DTT boxes topped 28.4m units between March 2003 and February this year.

There just remain small areas of the regions of Asturias, Castilla y León, Galicia and the Canary Islands without adequate coverage due to their difficult landscape.

There are eight public and 24 private channels on a national level.

For ASIMELEC the next goal for the industry is to improve the contents, to implement the interactivity and add HDTV. According to José Pérez, ASIMELEC’s general director, “The process of digitalization won’t end before 2015 when the HD DTT, the 3D DTT, the interactive DTT and the distribution of the so called ‘digital dividend’ have been completed.

So the task is big”.

But there’s another goal ASIMELEC forgot to mention: will this new market be profitable, taking account of the big number of channels? José Miguel Contreras Mediapro’s laSexta’s CEO assured the absurdity of this high number of channels in an advertising market which is not growing.

“There’ll be channels without a significant value and therefore will have to close down.”

Sogecable’s Cuatro, Mediaset’s Telecinco, Mediapro’s laSexta and Grupo Planeta’s Antena 3 will merge leaving – they say – only two big private national TV channels so the small ones claim there’ll be space for them too.

For the moment there’s only one pay-DTT channel covering sport with Mediapro’s Gol TV with already more than 1 million subscribers.

Most of the rest belong to other pay-TV operators such as Sogecable’s satellite pay-TV operator Digital+ or Telefónica’s DSL pay-TV operator Imagenio.

So in reality pay-DTT only attracts a small number of clients to date.

Another problem within the digitalization of TV is the fragmentation of the audiences.

And how to measure them so that advertisers have exact information to decide on which channel to launch their marketing campaigns?

There are still many questions to be solved and some major criticism asking why government insisted on HD content from the very first transmissions on DTT.

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Spain switches off analogue signal

Website: Rapid TV News

Earlier this week ‘Rapid TV News’ reported on the published Spanish government’s approved of its Mux plan for broadcasting after the switching off of its analogue signals.

Immediately following the plan’s approval the telecommunications industry warned of possible problems with interference risks in the planned television frequency plan.

In particular Spain’s broadcasters and cable MSOs fear what some experts have found in the future use for mobile telecommunications and where usage of those frequencies liberated by the TV channels in the digital process.

The fear is that cellular and other uses could cause interference in the reception of digital terrestrial signals.

The analogue switch off is already affecting some 16.5 million Spaniards in the major cities of Madrid, Seville and Barcelona, and which will be complete this Friday, April 2nd, with Spain’s government having given the green light to the assignment of frequencies for the new DTT channels.

In this process between March next year and January 2015 the frequency bands the broadcasters have been using to broadcast in analogue will be freed up.

Through this project the government believes the TV sector will generate from €12bn and €16bn in value market.

However, the fear is that not enough attention has been paid to new equipment to screen them from damaging the quality of many TV broadcasts.

National newspaper ‘Expansión’ has published what it sees as the huge costs for the re-pointing or replacing TV aerials to pick up the new digital channels.

According to some sources from the audiovisual industry there are technological procedures to avoid interferences between the mobile phones and the TV equipments although the costs can be high.

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Mux Plans could cause interference problems in Spain

Website: Rapid TV News

Four days before Spain’s national analogue switch-off, the government has approved the criteria for assigning digital-terrestrial TV multiplexes and also for the booking of the digital dividend.

By means of a new Royal Decree officially approved last week, the national private broadcasters will each be able to access a complete mux after analogue switch-off.

Public broadcaster RTVE and the regional public broadcasters will access two complete muxes each.

The Decree also determines the procedure for the utilization of the 790-862 MHz band, commonly known as the ‘digital dividend’ before January 2015.

The process established is step-by-step and made up of two phases, guaranteeing a smooth transition because at any given moment the private broadcasters have the same capacity for the transition.

The government has calculated the digital dividend will raise between E12,000 and E16,000 million for the national economy.

Those frequencies within the digital dividend are suitable for the allocation of new mobile broadband services so allowing improved coverage both in urban areas and in rural ones.

This will significantly advance the reduction in the so called ‘digital divide’ for the population so getting a bigger social and economic cohesion across the country.

The Decree establishes two phases: The first will start in June and will be implemented until March next year. The second phase will work on the booking of the frequencies band of between 790 to 862 MHz and will be used for advanced electronic communication services.

Meanwhile, Spain’s broadcasters want more broadband capacity to guarantee the offering of high-definition TV.

Maurizio Carlotti, Antena 3’s vice-president, said: “When the government approved the DTT plan it should have demanded we broadcast in HD such as happened in the US.

“But the government rather allowed many new DTT channels.”

José Miguel Contreras, laSexta’s CEO, thinks the same.

In the next few days the government is to approve another Royal Decree to regulate HDTV.

According to the government this new Decree will allow all broadcasters to officially offer HDTV services.

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Spain approves criteria for assigning DTT multiplexes

Website: Rapid TV News

Spain’s main cable operator Ono can celebrate its recent positive economic results in the middle of the current deep crisis.

The company ended last year with a net profit of €50 million compared with losses of €26 million in 2008.

Ono also surpassed its expectations for EBITDA, ending the period with €730 million compared with €701 million for the previous year, a growth of 4.2%.

The forecasts of the company at the beginning of that period were an EBITDA between €680 and €720 million.

However the operator’s revenues went down to €1,510 million, 5.6% less compared with the previous year due to the economic crisis, and an accompanying decrease in telephony and pay-TV consumption.

Ono had 1,902,000 residential subscribers at the end of last year, a decrease of 17,000 clients in relation to the same month the previous year.

But the company’s management are continuing the policy to push the market of triple play clients or combined services of telephony, pay-TV and the internet.

So 36% of its client base asked for these services in Q4 last year, compared with 34% in the same period the previous year.

But the operator registered a strong growth in the number of clients in broadband internet with a total of 1,326,000 at the end of last year, growth of 3.4%, compared with 1,283,000 at the end of the previous year.

So 72.6% of the company’s client base have this type of service.

As for Ono’s pay-TV service, the company had 6.2% fewer clients last year meaning a total of 975,000 subscribers.

This downturn corresponds to the operator’s basic TV services while the premium TV services registered better results in the number of clients.

So the downturn in the number of TV subscribers made the operator bet more on getting new clients to its telephony and broadband services.

As for the operator’s fibre optics network, at the end of last year it had more than 7 million homes connected, an increase of 41,000 homes.

According to Jonathan Cumming, Ono’s financial director the 2009 results “show that in spite of the difficult economic situation last year the company overtook its forecasts in terms of EBITDA, operative cash flow and free cash flow.”

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