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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: let who wrote (32981)	5/6/1998 3:56:00 PM
From: Don Dorsey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

I would expect the next move to be sometime within the next four weeks. As for your options, maybe some news will come out at the shareholder meeting this Friday. Will anyone besides me be there?

To: let who wrote (32981)	5/6/1998 5:00:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

Italy. C-Cube based boxes, from Nokia and Canal Plus, go here............................................. ijumpstart.com The Italian company still has not decided whether it will ally with established Italian satellite TV provider Telepiu (in which it has a 10 per cent stake) or join the new all-Italian digital platform forged last month between Italian state broadcaster RAI and state telecom company Telecom Italia. RAI, which owns 30 per cent of the venture (Telecom Italia owns the other 70 per cent), will be responsible for the editorial content of the platform. The satellite and cable digital platform will be open to potential new partners, but Telecom Italia will have a guaranteed 51 per cent stake. Some market analysts feel that the French and Spanish scenario will repeat itself also in Italy. In those countries, Canal Plus (90 per cent owner of Telepiu) counts the main telecom operator together with the principal terrestrial TV channels as its main competitors. In Italy, Telepiu owns most major pay-TV film rights and exclusive pay-TV football rights until the beginning of the 1999 season. Yet news of the Italian competitor hit Canal Plus' shares hard, as they fell 7 per cent soon afterwards. Investment bank Morgan Stanley predicted that the new platform will not have a serious impact on Telepiu in the short-to-medium term. However, the bank said that the competitor will force Canal Plus to figure out how to dispose of the excess Telepiu shares. The RAI/Telecom Italia deal put an end to negotiations conducted by Canal Plus with the goal of reaching an agreement on a single Italian digital platform. The main reasons for the failure were, on one hand, the firm will of Telepiu to maintain its dominant position in the Italian pay-TV market and on the other, the decision by RAI and Telecom Italia not to use the technology already developed by Canal Plus. The warning sent by the EU to the Italian government that a single Italian digital platform is a threat to free competition probably served to convince the management of RAI and Telecom Italia to offer an alternative platform. The under-secretary at the Ministry of posts and telecommunications, Vincenzo Vita, more or less confirmed this view by saying that "undoubtedly opinions from Brussels played a part, but the most important thing is that the process which seemed blocked is going ahead." Italian consumers now will have to choose between two different digital decoders - one for Telepiu and a different box (it will use an open conditional access system) for the Telecom-RAI digital package. Telepiu currently has a huge advantage over any potential competitors on the Italian market. First of all, Telepiu has already around 1.1 million subscribers to its analogue and digital packages and also has the financial backing of its major shareholder, Canal Plus, which also operates pay-TV services in Spain, Belgium, France, Poland, Scandinavia and North Africa. Besides having a huge programme archive (principally based on hit movies and sports rights), Canal Plus is also the proprietor of the software, i.e. the conditional access system needed to receive the new digital services.