CSA withdraws SelecTV authorisation

French media regulator the CSA has cancelled the authorization granted to video-on-demand specialist SelecTV to deliver VOD services on the country’s digital-terrestrial platform via capacity on the R3 multiplex.

The CSA ruled that SelecTV, which was granted the licence in January this year, had failed to meet its commitments.

SelecTV was a spin-off of digital-terrestrial pay TV provider TV Numeric, which went into receivership last October with about 35,000 subscribers. The receivership did not affect SelecTV itself, and the company entered an agreement with South African set-top maker Altech in January to develop the DVR-based on-demand service.

Separately, the CSA has announced that the six new HD DTT channels launched in France at the end of last year were now available in the regions of Basse-Normandie and Haute-Normandie, and the departments of Mayenne, Eure-et-Loir and the western part of Ile-de-France. The latest additions mean that the channels are now available to 47% of French households, taking the total number of free channels available to 25, including 11 in HD.

All the channels should be available to 97% of the French population by June 2015, with Provence-Alpes, the Côte d’Azur and Corsica set to receive them from September this year.