Too-Much-TV

eBiscom, half year results

More about eBiscom. Half-yearly preliminary results are just out. Total of 417,500 subs, up 41,000 in the quarter. These are mainly individual households, on either high speed DSL (eBiscom won't accept customers who can't get all their broadband TV and movies services, so around 5/6Mbps minimum) or 10Mbps fiber.

Consolidated revenues of over 335 million Euro for January-June 2004, an increase of over 41% compared to the first 6 months of 2003. Consolidated EBITDA of over 98 million Euro, an increase of over 167% compared to 36.9 million Euro during the same period of 2003. Press release at http://www.ebiscom.it/index.php?sid=89&idc=779

EU: possible investigation into discrimination by content providers

The EU's competition commissioner Mario Monti is considering opening an inquiry into the provision of music, film and sports over the Internet.

Broadband providers, Italy's eBiscom and Spain's Terra Networks have complained of discrimination by content providers in giving them access to quality audiovisual content. Articles about this in the Seattle Post- Intelligencer and The Australian, by the same AP reporter, but different enough to read both -- important.

No surprise. Silvio Scaglia said pretty much the same thing when I met him last summer -- the deals he did with content providers were by far the most difficult part of building eBiscom. Hear similar stories from broadband providers everywhere. The Intertainer anti competitive action against major Hollywood studios is the prime example.

And...seems the Motion Picture Association is about to begin and RIAA-like campagin complaining (PDF file about 68Kb), about how the Internet and particualrly broadband is killing their industry.