— Deutsche Telekom: The German telco (NYSE:DT) plans to offer IPTV to DSL customers in its home country in a bid to boost flagging fixed-line revenues, Thomson reports. The company already operates a TV service over fiber optic cable lines, but CEO Renee Obermann said it may expand the service to the other distribution medium, which would increase the number of cities that can receive the service from 27 to 777. The firm expects 17 million cable connections by the year’s end. Separately, DT’s T-Mobile unit in the U.S. spent over $912,000 lobbying federal government on issues including internet taxation and telecom subsidies to homes, schools and libraries, AP discovers from publicly filed documents.
— Jalipo, Joost & Blinkx: A couple of new channel partnership arrangements from two online TV distribution networks and the video search site. Jalipo, the site that gives credits-based pay-for access to channels over the web, has added CNN International to its roster, which already included Bloomberg, Al Jazeera and BBC World (via mad.co.uk), while Joost has got Raindance.tv, a indie film network modeled on Sundance but for the U.K., where the sun rarely shines (via mad.co.uk). Blinkx, the speech recognition-based video search index, announced it was indexing a further 28 niche-interest web TV nets including Cycling.tv and Weddings TV.
— E! Network: Cable channel E! is expanding its online news offerings with a new broadband effort called E! News Now. It will produce about 12 daily editions of the online show. Each segment will run between one and two minutes and zero in on a single breaking story or general topic. Aside from appearing on its website, E! News Now will also be accessible on mobile phones and through as-yet-unnamed distribution partners. (Variety)
— French Online TV Guide: Paris-based video and IPTV service, Ipercast, French second press editor Mondadori France, and NBC Universal, owner of channel 13th Street and Sci Fi, will launch GuideTele.com, trailed as France’s first interactive and multimedia TV guide.