Last year, Barron met some outstanding students from Devonshire International School in Coloane Province when the selected students came to London for study tour.
In August, as he had promised before, five students with outstanding academic performance will receive his funding and come to London for further studies.
To be precise, there were actually 6 students, because Rami, the older brother of the siblings born in Palestine, still maintained the top grade among all students. According to the agreement Barron had made with him, his sister Ravi would also come to London with him.
These people will first adapt here for a month, and then go to their respective schools to continue their studies after school starts.
During this period, Barron met with them again, had dinner with the children, and encouraged them.
It can be said that these children who were raised with the support of Barron, and who have always been educated with "gratitude", have the strongest loyalty to the Devonshire family.
"We have completed the upgrade of broadband equipment in areas including Ireland and the UK, but so far, BT is still ahead of us in terms of user share..."
In a conference room at O2 Telecom's London headquarters, its CEO Barry Trelles presents their development plans to Barron.
After O2 Telecom went public, it obtained sufficient funds, and they continued to invest the funds in upgrading infrastructure.
However, since the beginning of this year, BT has launched their video platform and started to provide online video services to users. It is said that they will also develop IPTV business in the future.
In order to respond to these services from BT, O2 Telecom has decided to increase its investment in DailyVedio.com and provide video-on-demand services to users in the UK and European markets based on this video website.
Initially, DailyVedio.com was just a video service provided by O2 Telecom to its broadband users. At that time, O2 Telecom and Digital UK each held a 50% stake in it.
Later, after Digital Future Investments joined, they invested in DailyVedio.com and acquired the shares held by Digital UK.
As of now, Digital Future holds 70% of DailyVedio.com's shares, while O2 Telecom still maintains a 30% stake.
Next, O2 Telecom will increase its investment in DailyVedio.com to increase its shareholding to 40%, and DailyVedio.com will not only be a video sharing website for users, but will also provide video-on-demand services to users based on this.
This also means that they will start purchasing a lot of film and television content to facilitate users to watch - SEM Group has also reached an agreement with DailyVedio.com to provide it with content and share in the profits.
"Sky TV will not be able to exclusively own the Premier League broadcasting rights next season. At that time, O2 Telecom can support DailyVedio.com to compete for some of the broadcasting rights of the games."
Hearing Barron's words, Barry Treles frowned and said:
"I'm afraid the price won't be too low by then, and there will be fierce competition..."
"But if DailyVedio doesn't compete, BT Sports will probably not miss the opportunity."
BT Sports is the sports channel of the video platform launched by BT. When Barron said this, Barry Trelles immediately agreed. After all, the two sides were fighting fiercely in the broadband business. O2 Telecom naturally could not give BT Sports such an opportunity to allow BT to gain more users through the Premier League broadcast.
It is estimated that the senior executives of BT are in a very delicate mood now - after all, who would have thought that O2 Telecom, which was once developed from the mobile communications business department of their company, has now become one of their biggest competitors.
The European Union's competition commission has ordered the Premier League to stop selling league live broadcast rights to just one television broadcaster after the 2006-2007 season.
This means that in the bidding for the Premier League broadcasting rights next year, the Premier League will sell the broadcasting rights of the Premier League to at least two broadcasters.
Because the relevant EU committee believes that Sky TV has always had a monopoly on the live broadcast rights of Premier League matches, which violates fair competition.
In fact, as early as the end of 2003, the European Union's Commercial Competition Committee had already warned about this matter. Under pressure at that time, the Premier League reformed the sales method when bidding for the league broadcasting rights for 2004-2007, increased the number of live games, and divided the bidding into three levels.
However, Sky TV, which was wealthy at the time, still acquired all levels of broadcasting rights for 1.024 billion pounds, and only the BBC, as a public television station, obtained the rights to broadcast highlights of the event.
At that time, the EU was very dissatisfied with this and asked the Premier League to break the monopoly of Sky TV. If the Premier League did not make concessions, the EU would require Premier League clubs to negotiate TV broadcasting rights themselves.
You should know that currently the Premier League broadcasting rights are sold in bundles, with the Premier League negotiating with broadcasters on behalf of the 20 clubs.
Because if the clubs negotiate among themselves, then except for the big-name teams favored by broadcasters such as Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal, the television broadcasting income of other mid- and lower-level teams will be greatly affected.
But the problem is, if the Premier League makes concessions and increases the number of broadcasters, then Sky TV will not be able to bid more than 1 billion pounds to purchase the broadcasting rights. The income of each club will be greatly reduced, and some may even face bankruptcy.
At least that's what the Premier League and those clubs thought, so some clubs said at the time that if the EU insisted on breaking Sky's monopoly, they would go to court.
The EU does not want the matter to drag on too long or even go to court. Originally, in Barron's previous life, the final solution was that the EU took the initiative to ask Sky TV to give up the live broadcast rights of at least eight games. After discussion, representatives of the Premier League clubs accepted the EU's compromise plan.
But now Barron certainly won't allow such a thing to happen again. Otherwise, although Sky TV will not be able to obtain the complete broadcasting rights for the Premier League, it will still retain the exclusive broadcasting rights for most of the events and will still occupy the most users in the field of sports channels.
Therefore, he not only contacted the SEM Group, but also TV stations such as the BBC to negotiate with the Premier League and proposed two plans. Either split the Premier League events in half, with at least two broadcasters obtaining the exclusive broadcasting rights for one of them; or the broadcasting rights for all events would be jointly obtained by at least two broadcasters.
And they promised that no matter which option they choose, they will compete with a bid no less than the last Sky TV bid...
Sky TV's bid for the last four-year Premier League broadcasting rights was £1.024 billion, which means that according to the plan of SEM Group and BBC, if the two companies participate, the Premier League will receive at least £2.048 billion in revenue...
This has indeed dispelled the concerns of the Premier League. In addition, the EU is also very supportive of this plan. Therefore, even if Sky TV obtains one of the two broadcaster spots in the future, it is destined to not be able to monopolize the Premier League live broadcast.
The current situation is that everyone except Sky TV supports these plans. Only Sky TV probably feels like it has been screwed...