IZZI hires a "twitterista"

IZZI, the Latvian cable TV, telco and internet services provider who faced a storm of criticism for poor service on Twitter, has hired a full-time employee to look after its interests on Twitter and other social networks.
This, of course, happened while I was on vacation in the US, which is why I am reporting it only now. However, the Twitter firestorm was well under way before I left. There were both anti-IZZI and pro-IZZI (though this was apparently a spoof) Twitter accounts launched.
The problem apparently started when a customer, dissatisfied with IZZI's internet service (claiming up to 100 Mbps speeds for some customers) and frustrated in attempts to get the problem solved, started to badtweet the company. See my earlier post.
The issue also got attention on Latvian TV, causing more bad publicity for IZZI in the "mainstream" media. The company quickly reacted by seeking someone to manage its reputation on Twitter and other social networks. It asked that the letter of application be sent in tweet format, 140 characters. There were quite a few applicants.
This is a good development, early adoption of awareness that company reputation can be made or broken on social networks, also that valuable information about customer attitude and problems can be found on these networks.

IZZI to launch 100 Mbps internet in April

IZZI, the Latvian cable TV, internet and telephony services provider will start offering its customers 100 Mbps internet speeds in early April, according to Helmut Kohl of IZZI's owner Contaq Latvian Cable.
The company will use DOCSIS 3.0 technology to deliver this speed over existing cables as well as some direct optical connections. The internet access will be independent of and unaffected by watching cable TV or digital cable TV over the same connection.
Kohl hinted that once the high speed network was running successfully for a while, it would be possible to offer what amounts to a service level agreement (SLA) for private customers and small businesses. SLAs often specify that data throughput speeds will not fall below a certain level and IZZI is hoping to make such guarantees at a future date.
IZZI business development director Sandra Kraujiņa said in a Latvian-language video interview that IZZI will expand its own subscriber bas to 126 000 by the end of 2009 and aggressively look for acquisitions on the Latvian cable TV market (it has already bought six smaller operators last year). She said the purpose was to take the largest market share in Latvia, unseating Baltkom TV, which claims the leading spot today.
IZZI officials said the company had a "double digit millions of LVL" war chest for this purpose, but did not disclose the precise sum. This money will be spend in addition to extensive investment in upgrading and consolidating its network. In a Latvian-language video interview, Kraujiņa invited small and regional operators who wanted to sell their business to come to IZZI.
The company also announced that it was implementing a two-year long program of discounts for triple-play services (telephony, internet and cable TV service) for pensioners, the unemployed, students and the parents of newborns. While pensioners are unlikely to change their status, Kohl said that he was counting on other groups (persons finding employment, students completing their studies and going to work) to apply their discounts on a "fair use"basis.

Latvia's IZZI promises 100 Mbps internet in 2009

IZZI, the Latvian cable television, internet and voice services provider, will be able to offer 100 Mbps internet speeds to its cable customers during 2009, according to Helmut Kohl, a representative of Contaq Latvian Cable, the company's new owner (a consortium of four investment funds).
Kohl said the planned upgrade of IZZI's cable network means it will decisively beat Lattelecom's DSL offering, which presently tops at 10 Mbps. Short of a major and expensive replacement of the entire copper-based infrastructure, coaxial cable linked to IZZI's fiber optic network in certain urban areas will be the fastest internet service in Latvia, he said. Such speeds can only be exceeded by upgrading to fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), which is being implemented on a very small scale in Latvia by Latvenergo and Lattelecom.
Kohl also said that IZZI was planning to participate in a forthcoming tender to provide digital terrestrial TV broadcast services to reach some 400 000 viewers in areas outside Latvia's larger cities where broadcast TV is the only service presently available.
Kohl said that if IZZI were awarded the deal, it had the money, know-how and other resources to start digital broadcasting within one year of the award. The digital TV tender is expected in November. The Contaq executive said that around 80 % of the necessary hardware and software resources needed for digital terrestrial broadcasting already existed to serve IZZI's digital cable TV network.
Kohl also said that IZZI hoped to expand its high-definition offerings on digital cable (currently limited to VOOM, an English language HD channel and an HD channel in Russian) next year and offer HD terrestrial broadcasts if given the chance. He cautioned, however, that there were no local HD offerings and those available in Europe in major languages were in English or German.
Commenting on possible competition between cable and IPTV, Kohl noted that some of the investors in the consortium behind the recent buy-out of IZZI (from Latvian stakeholders) were invested in IPTV.
Kohl sees IPTV as an outlet for specialized content and narrow audiences, citing a golf channel as an example, while more mainstream programming would be supplied on cable. The Contaq spokesman said he was not concerned that Lattelecom was offering timeshifted programming, since this was mainly locally produced, whereas timeshifting content such as feature films using the operator's platform was "a gray legal area" that could not be compared to recording shows on hard disk or tape while absent from home.

VOOM!!! IZZI launches HDTV in Latvia

IZZI, the mult-electronic communication services company, has launched High Definition TV in Latvia, starting with a version of the US-based channel VOOM. Kaspars Spunde, Marketing Director of IZZI, explains in this video:



Some other interesting hints -- look for IZZI to take part in a fiber to the home pilot project as soon as they find a suitable partner. FTTH is the obvious way to deliver the many HDTV channels and eventual HD video on demand services that will arise in Europe and Latvia in the next few years. IZZI will also soon launch ordinary video on demand. They are also thinking of packaging their HDTV and digital cable offering with a discount on a flat screen TV.
The HD service will cost LVL 3 per month in addition to the basic digital TV service (LVL 4) and rental of the HD decoder(LVL 7, or buy the thing for LVL 240, in interest free installments of LVL 40, if you wish)

IZZI gets the jump on HDTV

IZZI, the multi-services provider (internet, cable TV, wireless internet and mobile) has indicated it will make an announcement about High Definition TV (HDTV) on March 1. This means that the (not by so much) underdog has gotten the jump on market leader Baltcom TV and Lattelecom, which has yet to launch its IPTV for ordinary TV receivers service.
Two questions come to mind. First, what technology will be used to deliver the HDTV signal and in what parts of the IZZI network. Second, what HDTV channels will be available? I may be wrong here, but there aren't too many HDTV channels in Europe. There is one that is more or less a demo channel showing fluffy animals (count the hairs on their fur) and tropical fish (check out the facets of their scales).
To deliver HDTV apparently requires quite a few megabits, possibly the maximum that IZZI can deliver over cable. Here, Baltcom with its optical network in parts of Riga is perhaps better positioned. We shall see what IZZI has to say on March 1 and wait for Baltcom's countermove. Maybe that will be to do nothing until there is substantially more than fuzzybears and fish to show. That would be a step away from quantity (100 + digital channels) in favor of packaged quality (an HDTV offering with a few good channels, not the Poodle Channel and 99 others).
Anyway, IPTV (HD or otherwise) is hot, witness the bidding war for Tandberg Television between Ericsson and Arris Group of the US.

Look out Latvian cable operators

Had dinner with a couple of mid-level honchos here in Cannes. The upshot of it is that cable operators in Latvia have to start preparing to switch platforms, at least for their premium customers, who will want, say, Baltkom TV and IZZI to deliver HD TV when it is available. Also, as the price of flat-screen, HD ready TVs drops (and credit to buy these, say LVL 750, toys is easy to get). there will be a ready market for anyone who can deliver, meaning -- Lattelekom (if they push ADSL2+ to the max or run fiber to the curb and gigabit Ethernet), Latvenergo (for their fiber to the home customers) and the satellite people (VIASAT, LVL 5 HD Digital Dishes in late 2007, anyone). IPTV is the only alternative, providing you can deliver reliable last-mile bandwidth, which you may not be able to do with several HD channels over MMDS or coaxial cable. So time to think of the near future. Did I say Cisco? Worth considering...
Not writing in my usual typestyle because Firefox access to Blogger is AFU (all f**ked up).

Digital TV resurfaces

Just a brief note -- Baltcom together with Latvian Independent Television (LNT) has proposed a private sector solution for digital terrestrial broadcast. The companies essentially want to revive a project killed by scandal in 2003 with some hope of implementing privately-financed digital broadcast TV in Latvia sometime in the 2010s.
Meanwhile, the market for digital broadcast (as far as reaching audiences with any purchasing power) has been pre-empted by cable in the cities (Baltcom and IZZI both offer digital cable in Riga) and digital satellite outside the cable footprint (ViaSat is selling satellite dishes for LVL 1 with a subscription package).
This project creates a small hope that Latvia will not be the last country in Europe with an aging and unwatched (by the commercially interesting audience) analog TV service. It will, instead, in 2015 or whatever, be the last country to get a largely unwatched digital terrestrial broadcast system (with everyone watching satellite or global broadband TV via superfast HSDPA or a successor technology).