Impresa proposes DTT consortium in Portugal

Impresa, the Portuguese Media group has proposed the creation of a consortium among public broadcaster RTP and private TV channels SIC and TVI, to compete for the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) licenses.
The proposal was put forward during a presentation of the company’s digital plans in Lisbon, where it was revealed that discussions have already taken place with Media Capital, the owner of TVI.  The partnership could also be extended to RTP. The president of Impresa underlined that the company, via SIC, is interested in both free-to-air and pay-TV channels on DTT, stressing that priority must be given to HDTV.
The Portuguese Government will launch two separate DTT tenders, one for the management of the digital platform which will carry the FTA channels and another for pay-TV channels. The first tender, for the platform carrying RTP, SIC and TVI, will be organised by national telecom regulator Anacom, as the FTA channels already have a license. The second tender, for its part, foresees the awarding of a license for management of the DTT platform and another for the joint management of pay-TV channels.
Source: advanced-television.com
Item added: 16th July 2007