French Firms To Beam TV Programmes To Mobile Phones

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Paris (AFP) Jun 28, 2005
French satellite television broadcaster Canalsat and mobile phone operator SFR are to launch on Wednesday the world's first service that will beam television programmes direct to mobile telephones, the two companies said on Tuesday.

The channels will be available on so-called third generation or 3G services provided for subscribers to SFR, which is owned by the French group Vivendi Universal with Vodafone of Britain as a major shareholder.

Canalsat and SFR said the new service was a world first and would initially offer 17 channels on payment of a monthly subscription fee of 12 eurosdollars), excluding connection costs.

The service will include a range of programmes from Canal Plus, the French pay TV channel, which also belongs to Vivendi Universal.

Additional channels are to be made available once the French summer period was over, from September, the statement said.

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Panamsat And JSAT To Expand Into United States HD And IP TV Markets

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Jun 28, 2005
PanAmSat announced Monday that it was joining forces with long-time partner JSAT Corporation to form a joint venture that will launch a new Ku-band satellite to satisfy the growing demand in the U.S. market.