EE, Netgem making superior boxes in a tight economy !

===> " ...The EE TV smart box will be free for all EE mobile customers who sign up to an EE Broadband plan. Eligible plans start from £9.95 per month and include free weekend calls and unlimited broadband, with speeds of up to 17Mbps...."

au français: 
===> "La EE TV smart box  sera gratuit pour tous les clients EE mobiles qui s inscrivent à un plan EE large bande. <=== 
Plans admissibles commencent à partir de £ 9,95 par mois et comprennent des appels gratuits le week-end et haut débit illimité, avec des vitesses allant jusqu à 17Mbps."


"...For the uninitiated, EE is the largest cellular operator in the UK, a merger of Orange and T-Mobile to turn the tails on O2 and Vodafone, which were comfortably winning the UK mobile war before these two merged to overtake them.

The existence of 3 UK means that merger still left four operational MNOs in the UK, otherwise it might have been blocked and is probably why Orange and Deutsche Telekom has not done the same elsewhere.

But from the pay TV point of view, it comes with quite a few advantages. First it has the backing of Orange, which is strong in TV in its own country, but which also has a few European subsidiaries – in particular in Poland where it owns Telekomunikacja Polska and offers DTH and IPTV, and in Spain where it is building out fibre (with Vodafone), and offering it with TV.

EE can also call back on the experience of Deutsche Telekom, which has pay TV operations in Germany, Croatia, Greece, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia. Between them this ups the ante on their content buying power reaching well over 10 million homes already and looking to take that up significantly by adding homes in the UK.

Here it has over 25 million customers out of a population of an estimated 64 million, giving it a marketing target in at least 10 million UK homes.

Collectively in TV these two businesses almost as powerful as BSkyB. The other issue is that Orange has the experience of surviving the triple play wars in France, the only the place in Europe that grew up habitually offering free TV to broadband customers. The result of this is that it uses “boxes”, which typically offer a full triple play in a broadband gateway acting as a set top, a VoIP controller and a gateway, as a matter of course.

In France the four telcos are now fighting it out, with Homespot Wi-Fi undermining cellular pricing as well.

Another advantage is that these companies have relationships with equipment vendors such as Netgem, which are used to making superior boxes to work in a tight economy.

We can reveal that this service is being backed by a device and software from Netgem, and this seems to be its first deal in the UK. It naturally hopes this will be an invasion of the French way of doing things and while Iliad’s Free seems intent on buying it way into the US, by acquiring T-Mobile, it looks like this is the assault on the UK market that these two have waited for. As you look around Europe, Orange or T-Mobile have been successful in most smaller markets with the exception of Italy, Spain and the UK...."

source:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/13/ee_tv_brings_french_broadband_price_war_to_the_uk/