Still No Word From Telmicro
Written by Louise Clarke
Thursday, 18 September 2008
Not surprisingly, our open invitation to Telmicro Levante to speak to us regarding the dire situation that it has found itself in, went unanswered. Here at Round Town News we are still being inundated with e-mails and telephone calls from disgruntled customers and have spent the week getting various statements in order so that we can tell you, our readers, the best course of action; a legal way to get British TV here in Spain. As we told you last week, we have contacted many companies in both the UK and here in Spain so that we can determine exactly what is the best and legal way to receive TV and what isn’t. As we confirmed at the time, the crux of the whole issue is that Telmicro Levante S.L. were re-broadcasting British TV. Basically, they were using the mesh dishes to receive a signal that was itself being received via a larger dish. The signals were transmitted all over the Southern Costa Blanca and as this is illegal, the authorities shut them down. It is believed that they will be also targeting other companies doing this in the near future. Through our investigations, we have confirmed that the only legal way to get British TV is to buy a satellite dish that is large enough to receive the signal directly from the satellite that is in orbit. This has been confirmed by the Telecommuncations Ministry in Madrid.
SKY
We contacted BSkyB to determine what their position is with regards to their channels being broadcast over here. Their spokesperson said; “Sky only authorises the reception of Sky TV in the UK and Ireland. Our terms and conditions expressly prohibit reception elsewhere in Europe. If we have evidence that a viewing card is being used outside the UK or Ireland, we switch it off. We also have no formal distribution or re-broadcasting of our channels outside of the UK and Ireland.” The Spokesperson continued; “Because we don’t own the rights to broadcast many of our programmes outside the UK and Ireland, we are unable to make our Sky TV services available in other countries. We only provide Sky TV services to customers with an address in the UK or Ireland. Telmicro Levante S.L. has no connection to Sky and, while we are very sympathetic to its former customers, we are unable to assist them in this situation.”
BBC & ITV
The BBC told us that their programmes are financed by UK Licence Fee-paying citizens and outside of the UK they are licensed by BBC Worldwide. They said; “BBC Worldwide’s portfolio of 22 channel brands brings the best mix of entertainment, factual, learning and children’s programming to around 259 million homes in over 100 countries around the world, making BBC Worldwide the UK’s number one international television broadcaster in terms of reach. BBC Worldwide is the only service that can be transmitted legally outside of the UK.” ITV on the other hand said that it would be legal to transmit their channels if an interested party were to buy a licence. They said; “ITV’s channels are produced for broadcast in the UK. Any party wishing to broadcast them in another territory, such as Spain, would need to enter into a licence or agreement with ITV” They refused to speculate as to how much a licence would be to buy.
Digital +
It soon became apparent that none of the main British TV companies are willing to transmit here in Spain, so after we had exhausted the UK companies, we turned our attention to the Spanish. We contacted the Comisión de Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones (CMT), the Spanish Broadcasting Market Commission. They told us that in order to transmit a signal of a paid satellite channel in Spain, that channel only has to ask for a permission from the UK authorities, to get the signal out of the country. This can be done in every country where the satellite has coverage and that channel won’t have to ask for any broadcast permit in Spain. If a company wants to broadcast that channel here they will need to, contact the broadcast channel to ask for permission to re-broadcast and pay the copyrights to the channel. The channel will have to ask for the permission from the UK authorities first though. Secondly, they need to be a legal company which is registered at the CMT and at the Comunidad Autonoma de Andalucia. With this in mind, we then contacted Spanish company Digital Plus. The press department of Sogecable, the group that owns Digital Plus, issued this statement to RTN; “We confirm that we have no intention at the moment of getting the rights of SKY channels for Spain. Therefore Digital Plus will not transmit that signal.” The reason that they gave is that due to the majority of English speaking people only living in pockets along the coast of Spain, they won’t transmit specific channels just for one or two regions. They have a countrywide signal and it wouldn’t be in their interests to provide British TV to the whole of Spain.
Satellite
A satellite TV expert confirmed; “UK TV is only legally obtained by installing equipment that receives the TV transmission direct from the satellites (Astra2D and Eurobird). It is possible to purchase and install readily available consumer products and equipment designed to receive these satellite transmissions and when using a free to air ‘digi’ box the customer is not infringing any copyright laws or licenses by viewing channels received via satellite transmissions that are readily available in Spain. In summary, the use of a large dish and a free to air ‘digi’ box decriminalises the viewing of UK television in Spain.
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