To draw in competitors to Canal+, French football Ligue 1 broadcasting rights are being tendered in 12 lots, offered in three sequential auctions (non-premium Fans matches, Premium, highlights)
French altnet Neuf Cegetel is buying Club Internet from Deutsche Telekom for an estimated €500 million and will overtake its rival Free as the #2 on the DSL market, still way behind Orange
The new consumer data tariffs from Vodafone and Orange in the UK continue the trend towards dramatically lower data prices for high end users, although they are cunningly structured to involve more moderate increases for low end users
Canal+ targeted subscription (as opposed to subscriber) growth of 1.3 million by 2010 has a lot of stretch in view of the intense competition from free-to-air (FTA) services and in particular digital terrestrial TV
Vodafone and Orange are planning to share their 3G networks in the UK, and are looking at potentially sharing their 2G networks in due course
Vodafone UK’s new broadband product is not very competitively priced compared to the offers from Carphone Warehouse and Orange, costing £5-10 a month more than the nearest equivalent packages
Orange UK’s converged mobile and broadband brands and ‘free’ broadband offer has not proved a big hit with consumers, with Orange reporting just 25,000 DSL net additions for the September quarter, likely to be below 5% market share
In a fit of pique over increasing subsidies, Vodafone UK is dropping Carphone Warehouse (CPW) as a distributor, and moving exclusively to Phones4U with lower subsidy levels and volume guarantees, while Orange is reportedly also considering its position with CPW
Ten years of fierce and implacable rivalry between Canal+ Group and TPS, the two French pay-TV operators, is expected to end in November 2006, when they close their merger deal and Canal+ France emerges. This report examines the strategic rationale for pay-TV consolidation in the French TV market, where digital terrestrial TV has recently launched and where TV-over-DSL is rapidly being deployed, as well as the potential for the currently low pay-TV margins to rise
Orange’s new ‘free broadband’ offer brings savings of up to 60% for Orange UK customers who pay for broadband, and may appeal to a great many of them