BT appoints former ex-BBC policy adviser
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008New Media IPTV recruits former Auntie adviser
As mobile and broadband providers O2 and
Milner said: “Convergence [in the telecoms market] has been a hot debating topic for at least a decade. For BT and our customers, it’s now a reality and it’s generating policy conundrums which need tackling.”
In the last five years alone we’ve seen mobile phone companies merge with internet service providers, and TV companies setting up their own fixed line networks – BT Vision was launched just over a year ago, and has been busy in snapping up content for the service, most notably near-live coverage of Premiership football games, which when combined with the Setanta Sports Pack, made for an alternative to Sky.
Last year, BT inked a deal with Channel 4 which allowed customers to watch content downloaded on the 4oD platform on their TV screens via the BT Vision box. BT also made noises about New Media 2, a new concept for 21st Century TV which would see viewers actively participating in the plot outcomes of drama series, allowing for multiple endings to programmes via a library of additional content downloaded from an online backend of additional material.
BT Vision currently has a consumer base of nearly 200,000.
