As if, with the liberalisation of the telecoms market across Europe, France Telecom didn't have enough on its plate.

Executives at the state-owned company came back to work after Christmas to find a writ from TV station Canal France International (CFI) concerning a technical glitch that happened last year.

The problem was that the glitch happened when CFI was broadcasting a children's programme into the Arab world, via the Arabsat satellite. Instead of the French equivalent of Den TV, viewers across the Islamic world saw a pornographic movie.

The mistake led to a flurry of apologies from CFI and the French government, but to no avail. Arabsat banned the station from its airwaves, dealing a blow to French hopes of competing with US-made TV programmes for Arab audiences.