France Telecom, in partnership with TPS, announced the commercial launch of TV-over-DSL services. “MaLigne tv” initially is available in Lyon. It will be extended to Paris in spring 2004 followed by a rollout in other French cities. TPS is a content distributor that is jointly owned by French TV stations TF1 and M6.
Two content tiers are offered. The basic “MaLigne tv,” which costs EUR 16 per month, provides the TPS L programming package along with a range of VOD movies and TV shows. A “TPS L Prestige” package, priced at EUR 21 per month, adds exclusive coverage of League 1 soccer matches, six different movie channels, all French national channels, plus a range of international channels. An extensive VOD library based on the a-la-carte model is available through France Telecom partnerships with content producers, including TPS, TF1, M6, Arte, France Télévisions and Movie System and through the CNC, Lobster Film, Roissy Film.
The self-install, “MaLigne tv” TV-over-DSL service is being promoted through retail channels, including Carrefour, Darty and FNAC and France Telecom stores.
France Telecom has deployed a dedicated end-to-end architecture for its TV-over-DSL. Its partners include Alcatel for the multicast-enabled DSLAMs , SAGEM for the MPEG-2 set-top decoders, Thalès for the service management platform and Thomson for the video encoders. Digital rights management is provided with the Viaccess conditional access system.
http://www.francetelecom.com
- France Telecom added nearly 400,000 ADSL lines in Q3 2003, giving it a total of 2.5 million lines in service at the end of the quarter. The company said it is on target to reach 3.0 million lines by the end of the year. Revenues from ADSL broadband Internet access (excluding revenues from Wanadoo clients) increased 23% compared to Q3 2002 due to the rapid development of ADSL in France. About two-thirds of the ADSL lines are served by Wanadoo and the remaining third by other ISPs and unbundled lines.