BBC Worldwide have just signed their first licensing deal for Interactive content with the Australian broadcaster ABC.
Author: Simon Perry
Microsoft announce Xbox Live
At E3, Microsoft announces details their online Multi-user broadband gaming network, “Xbox Live”. At just short of $50/year it will initially offer an “Xbox Communicator” – a mike for in game chatting with remote players. Making clear their commitment to the Xbox over the next five years they’ve also pledged a further $2Bn support budget.
BT waive ADSL activation fee
BT’s offer to wave the £65 activation fee for new ADSL users has been extended until August 2002 from the end of May.
Oftel give BT access to the hallowed ‘Blue bill’
About eight years ago I remember when working on the product structure of the pre-launch of BT’s Wireplay service (Multi-user gaming service – great idea, badly executed, later sold on). One of our suggestions involved placing various charging items on the regular or ‘Blue bill’ and BT were very clear that this was and would only be allowed to be billed for phone charges – although they very much wanted to use it.
I was really surprised to see that Oftel recently gave BT the ability to charge their broadband services on the hallowed ‘Blue bill’. Freeserve can clearly see the advantage of BT having this and have blown a gasket.
Korea now has 8.5m broadband users
The Korean government have just announced they’ve reached nearly 8.5 Million broadband users with Korea Telecom having nearly half of these. Estimates are 10M by the end of the year.
SonicBlue given some breathing space
SonicBlue have been given a stay, until 3rd June, in the court order that will force them to put software in their device that will individually monitor the viewing habits of their customer. The initial demand was made following enormous pressure from the movie and TV media owners. Perhaps the judiciary has remembered, on reflection, that this is in the ‘Land of the Free’.
ADSL complaints in the UK rise
There are reports of users complaining, quite hard, about the quality of service they are receiving from their ADSL provider in the UK. Sadly, some may say this is inevitable during the stampede leading up to 31.May.02 when the free install offer finishes.
NTL provide public IP addresses in Manchester
NTL have just given its broadband cable customers in Manchester public IP addresses to replace their private IP addresses. NTL state that this is to get around P2P and multi-player gaming problems.
This may be the whole reason, or it may be a counter attack on BT. One of the big sales area for ADSL for BT is businesses, which isn’t an area the cable companies have been aiming at up to now. Giving people public IP addresses could be a move towards this, as it will make it easier to run a server on their cable connection.
New Star Wars is double digital
During the inevitable press build up to the release of the new Star Wars film “Attack of the Clones”, there are two interesting news items doing the rounds.
The first is that this is the first ‘major’ film to have been totally shot digitally, but sadly most audiences will see it on film due to there only being eighty screens in the US that have digital projectors.
The other is that DV video cameras are being used to shoot the projection of the film in pre-release showings and theses copies are being distributed around the Internet well ahead of the public release, some say the furthest in advance of any film so far. Hardly surprising given the Star Wars/Geek crossover.
Nintendo announce broadband adaptor
The big Three (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft) games platforms producers are all getting excited about broadband gaming. This week it’s Nintendo’s belated turn to announce the launch of their adaptor, due to be release in the Autumn at the cost of ~$35.