Having bagged one of the four available set top box deals with British Sky Broadcasting, Pace Micro Technology Plc has secured a second such deal with BSkyB rival, British Digital Broadcasting. Pace has won one of the six available contracts up for grabs, with the others going to Grundig AG, Philips Electronics NV, Nokia Oy, Sony Corp and Toshiba Corp. The six companies will provide BDB with plug-and-play set top boxes for the UK terrestrial digital broadcasting that BDB will start offering towards the end of the year. A couple of weeks ago BDB, which is owned by UK television companies Granada Group Plc and Carlton Communications Plc, announced it had selected a conditional access system, the SECA system, from French broadcaster Canal Plus (CI No 3,354), and said it would announce the manufacturing contracts within the next couple of weeks. In January Pace warned it wouldn’t be able to produce the boxes for BSkyB’s digital service until after its fiscal year in May, casting doubts over BSkyB’s spring launch date (CI No 3,325). But now Pace seems to think it will be able to get its offering for BDB to market before the other contract winners because it is ahead of the game and has already integrated SECA for use in the boxes. BDB is now in the process of working out contractual details with the six manufacturers and has not disclosed the values of the contracts or the volumes of boxes they relate to. Shipley, West Yorkshire-based Pace, known as a set top decoder operation has been through a rough patch since its flotation in the spring of 1996 (CI No 2,922). The company is attributing the four profit warnings that have come during this time to the slower than expected take up of digital television and towards the end of last year forecast smoother waters with the appointment of a new chief executive officer, Malcolm Miller (CI No 3,262). But in January it reported interim losses of 12.3m pounds (CI No 3,324) and in February said it would axe 15% of its workforce, some 150 jobs in an attempt to save 5m pounds (CI No 3,339).
