The hip and happening world of connected TV descends on Olympia in London this week for IP&TV World Forum, with companies from around the world promoting their wares and widgets. Among those pressing the flesh will be Appear TV , which today announced it will be demonstrating its in-house-designed encoding and transcoding platform. Other IPTV news comes from Orange (NYSE: FTE)'s Orange, which had 5.1 million TV service subscribers at the end of 2011 and is in the process of deploying middleware from Viaccess S.A. and Orca Interactive Ltd. that will support ADSL, FTTH and hybrid satellite-IP services on one platform. The French telco announced today that 400,000 customers had joined the new platform in less than three months. (See Appear TV Shows Off at IP&TV Forum , Carriers Catch CDN Fever and 7 Things to Know About Your Future TV.)

Free Mobile, the Iliad-owned brand that has shaken things up in France, has taken 134,000 customers from Bouygues Telecom up to March 1, according to a report in Business Week, citing Le Figaro. (See Iliad Disrupts the French Mobile Scene , Euronews: Iliad Gets the All-Clear on Free Mobile and Euronews: Iliad's Clogging Our Network, Says FT.)

The U.K. may not have the zippiest downlink speeds in Europe but that hasn't stopped it from being crowned the king of the Internet economies in a new study, according to a BBC report. Researchers at the Boston Consulting Group found that the Internet contributes to 8.3 percent of the U.K. economy, which is a bigger share than is the case in any of the other G20 major countries. (See Great Britain? I Don't Think So and Euronews: UK Mad for Slow Mobile Broadband.)

Bridge Technologies Co AS has launched an offering for over-the-top (OTT) service monitoring and analysis. The microAnalytics system allows operators to remotely access real-time data from set-top boxes, connected TVs and other mobile devices. (See Bridge Monitors OTT Video.)

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading