Analyst conferences are a good way to get an quick fire update on a company's strategy, so I'm spending a valuable couple of days in Boston with Alcatel-Lucent. But often the best presentations at such events are given by partners or customers, and today was no exception. It was Paul Corbel, the CTO of French mobile operator SFR, who had the most interesting things to say about the state of the wireless industry and the outlook for new technologies and services. Paul described the highly competitive environment in the French mobile market, where MVNOs are now taking 50% of new customers, the third largest player has introduced flat rate bundles of unlimited calls, and SFR recorded 0% revenue growth last year. In spite of these challenges, SFR, 44% owned by Vodafone, continues to see the mobile phone as key to its success, since it believes this is the device most preferred as a communications tool. Paul cited data suggesting 40% of home-based phone calls in France are now made from a mobile phone. SFR's strategy is to continue to push the mobile phone as the preferred consumer device, as well as extending its capabilities in data, taking share from the fixed voice and data market. Expect SFR to be very aggressive in HSDPA pricing later this year. At the same time, the CTO was refreshingly cautious (compared to the rosy scenarios often presented by certain technology vendors) on the potential for new services such as advertising, games and video to make up for declining voice ARPUs. The company's own models suggest that €100m advertising revenue could be a realistic target, and this makes it very small in the context of the company's overall scale. There does seem to be an inherent conflict in SFR's plans, which can also be detected in its parent company, namely that there is a love-hate affair with the fixed access business. SFR's 40% subsidiary, Neuf Cegetel, has just acquired Ozone, a Wifi provider, presumably partly to offer more cost-effective roaming web access and even Voice over Wifi like its competitors. SFR has in any case been offering DSL and will continue to do so in order to remain competitive. You get the strong sense that SFR sees all this wireline stuff as a necessary evil rather than a positive strategic play. But the company has aggressive plans for a number of new technologies, including residential femto cells, so it's a company that should stay on the radar. Anyway, congratulations to ALU for inviting a customer to tell analysts it will continue to reduce capex by 10% a year and encourage more competition between its suppliers. That is a better reflection of the real story behind the wave of new communications technologies coming down the pipeline.

One of the perennial questions we get asked is, what will be the next TV display technology? We have been predicting the dominance of LCD for at least the last 10 years, but until recently plasma was giving it a reasonable run for its money. As I mentioned in February, the only remaining LCD/plasma battleground is 50-60", and the plasma supporters are the ones under the most pressure. The industry had been expecting another large screen technology to enter the fray. Surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED) technology was a joint venture of Toshiba and Canon until Toshiba pulled out in January over a dispute with Nano-Proprietary, owners of field emission display technology. At the time Canon claimed it still planned to begin pilot production of large (55") in June. It has now postponed those plans indefinitely, claiming that "prices of flat panels are declining more rapidly than expected". Where have we heard that before? Yes, Circuit City blaming plummeting TV prices for disappointing results back in December. Well, whatever the specific price projections Canon was working from, they would have had to be pure fantasy to believe that SED could be mass manufactured from a standing start to compete effectively with the millions of LCD TVs now be churned out across Asia. Don't get me wrong - SED was an impressive technology. We saw it demonstrated at CES 2006 and there was no question, if they had managed to get it off the ground it would have rustled a few competitors' feathers. But that's the problem with all so-called ground breaking new display technologies. Even if they offer radical performance improvements, their business potential and competitiveness has to be modelled on the basis of the market environment in five years' time, not today's. OLEDs are looking interesting in smaller sizes, but my bet is that LCD will remain dominant for a good few years to come.

Well, good job I put a questionmark after the last entry title. Canal Digital confirmed to me today that standard definition TV will not be shut down in 2008. Here is the company's response: "On a general basis Canal Digital is not out searching for new St-channels to launch as such. But seeing the development of niche-channels and new national channels there will still be launches of new ST-channels, when they are expected to be attractive to our customers, as well as HD channels. "On a long run acquisition of HD-content is Canal Digital's main priority. Mr Søderman has not expressed that there will be a ST-shutdown from next year, but his intention was to mention this will be a situation in the future. "He clearly pointed out we hope to reach 10 HD Channels within the end of 2007. And continue to secure HD-content in 2008 as well. "Today we have 8 HD-channels in our offering, and we are realistic seeing that even some of the national broadcasters in the Nordic region does not even commit to an HD-offering before 2009/10. "We are very realistic that HD is still regarded as a niche product - and we are well aware that we will provide all our customers with ST-channels in today's business model years ahead. Therefore the information in the article is not regarded as confirmed and may not be used in any circumstance." So, it sounds like the communications wires got crossed somewhere, and that Canal Digital is in much the same situation as any other multichannel platform - the trend is towards HD, but it is still niche, and further new SD channels are also likely. A complete switchover to HD will only occur "years ahead", at some undefined point in the future. Shame, I was looking forward to BBC Food in glorious high definition...

A couple of items recently that suggest Europe is accelerating towards a high definition TV future. First, it has been reported that Canal Digital, one of Scandinavia's two major pay TV providers, plans to "switch off" its SD (standard definition) TV channels. Jarl Søderman, deputy CEO, is quoted as saying the company will "take down" its SD channels in 2008, and that it is no longer buying new SD channels. Canal Digital, owned by Norway's Telenor, has certainly been one of the more aggressive of Europe's digital TV providers, having been one of the first to launch regular HD services in 2005. But if this report is accurate, it would make the company the first in the world to switch completely from an SD to an HD platform. I will certainly be checking the fine details with Canal Digital - there are real question marks over whether any channel, let alone 100 or so regular entertainment channels, will be able to offer true HD content around the clock within the next year. The second development has been the publication of the CSA's (France's regulator) summary of the contributions in response to the consultation on HDTV on digital terrestrial TV. Of 18 contributions, only two (representing unions and regional and local media interests) object to the introduction of HDTV. This is probably more a reflection of the fact that France seems to have decided, regardless of any consultation procedure, to go ahead with HD-DTT in any case. UK viewers expecting to see HD on the Freeview DTT platform will recognise a stark contrast: the UK is consulting instead on whether spectrum freed by the switch-off of analogue broadcasting should even be used for television, or instead be allocated to alternative communications providers.

I was one of the first customers to sign up to Sky's pioneering DVR service, Sky+, back in 2001, as I previously blogged. Sky's excellent customer records have now allowed it to remind me of this fact by sending me a letter inviting me to spend more money with them. Specifically they are inviting early Sky+ adopters to upgrade to Sky HD and Sky Anytime, the new "push download" DVR service. The clincher in the Sky letter is that "Sky Anytime ... is unfortunately not available on your current Sky+ box". I can apparently choose to pay Sky either £149 for a new HD box, or £79 for a SD box that will be compatible with Sky Anytime. Both would come with free installation. Given that I have not yet invested in an HDTV display, the HD option doesn't seem sensible. So why would Sky Anytime tempt me to spend £79 on a new box? Sky has told me nothing about what content Sky Anytime will offer, and I remain to be convinced that push downloads are an adequate competitive solution to true VOD for non-VOD platforms like satellite or terrestrial. So I will pass on their invitation on this occasion. If I had been ready to upgrade to HD, I suppose the £149 might have been tempting. But judging from friends' experience of the Sky HD service, I remain sceptical. One near-neighbour has just become what must be one of the first Sky customers to churn from HD back to SD. After being caught up in the initial wave of HD hype and a new flat panel TV purchase, he decided the £70 a month for the various Sky sports, movies, extra box and HD options was simply excessive. So there is at least one Sky HD box owner not receiving HD channels right now. Sky has just reported its highest churn rate in many years - it seems that even new services like HD and Anytime are not enough to keep every customer happy, and free-to-air services like Freeview are becoming ever more attractive compared to the higher ARPUs demanded by pay TV providers.

... look out of the window, of course, or, possibly, watch the Weather Channel in HD, which presumably should be just as good, depending on how often you get your windows cleaned. The Weather Channel launched in 1982, is owned by Landmark Communications, Inc. and reaches more than 89 million subscribers in the US. It has just announced an investment of $50m in HDTV, and its HD channel will be launched on DirecTV in September 2007. The investment will include a new studio in Atlanta, new cameras and other equipment, as well as upgrading its extensive graphics output to HD quality. Debora Wilson, the company's president, claims that the transition to HD is simply a "cost of doing business". Sony's broadcast division will certainly be licking its lips... TWC is an interesting case in the HD transition because it is one of the few examples of a nearly-24-hour live network. Even the regular 24-hour news channels carry a certain amount of pre-recorded programming, and TWC claims that 22 our of every 24 hours are live feeds. This means that, once the HD investments are made, the channel will very quickly become a full HD service, unlike most channels that claim to be HD, but in fact are relying heavily on upconverting older, SD originated material. There is still considerable debate as to how far and how fast the HD transition is going to affect news channels. The scale of TWC's investment suggests one reason why others may be reluctant to move quickly, however much it is dressed up as part of the normal capital spend. I imagine that for CNN or Sky News to make a similar move would require an outlay an order of magnitude greater, given the news gathering resources required to operate such a service. The flipside is that news channels may find themselves isolated from HD tiers. Wilson notes that HDTV subscribers tend to stick to HD channels, so news and other channels resistant to the transition may be forced to respond sooner than they would like.