Promising start to the season for BT Vision
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007Customers lured in by near-live broadcasts.
BT Vision has scored a small early victory against TV rivals Sky and Virgin by signing up an additional 24,000 customers to its IPTV service in the last two months – this growth has been attributed to the near-live broadcasts of Premiership games and the ability to subscribe to the Setanta Sports package.
This means that BT Vision’s customer base will have doubled in size – official figures released at the end of June show that just over 20,000. Still, the combination of Freeview plus pay per view trimmings has much to play for throughout the remainder of the season. Sky boss James Murdoch said as much when quizzed about his thoughts on the IPTV player; “In respect to BT Vision it is pretty early days.”
Commentators have high hopes for the IPTV market in the UK; the success of Homechoice, now owned by Tiscali, has proven that on-demand viewing can work within a market traditionally dominated by subscription TV.
