BT breaks new ground with IPTV service

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 05 December 2006 01:02

Your IT - Home IT

BT Vision Sport customers will have access to the Setanta Sport channel and its 46 live FA Premiership games, 60 live games from the Scottish Premier League and "a great deal of other sport." They will also have access to the 242 "near live" on-demand FA Premiership games secured by BT earlier this year.

BT Vision requires no subscription or minimum monthly payment. This, says BT differentiates it from other services on the market. Customers can subscribe to genres of content should they wish or pay as they go. Movies will be available on a pay per view basis and BT claims that current titles will be offered at lower prices than satellite, cable and high street video chains. Subscriptions for other types of content can be for as little as one month.

BT promises that, from 2007, the service will use broadband to deliver more special interest programming and there will be new interactive services based around audience participation, voting, gaming, gambling and communications enabling customers to chat with each other or use video telephony to talk face to face whilst watching programmes. BT Vision will also provide a platform for user-generated content so customers can share their videos, photographs and music with a wider audience.

Existing BT Total Broadband customers will be the first to experience BT Vision, beginning with those who pre-registered their interest earlier this year. BT says it will start to fulfil orders from that customer base from mid December. It promises to connect hundreds of thousands by the end of 2007 and says it aims to have two to three million BT Vision customers in "the medium term" but has avoided saying exactly what that means.

Also, BT and Vodafone UK will offer customers of the Vodafone at Home service a version of BT Vision. Vodafone UK will be the exclusive mobile network partner offering BT Vision as part of this converged TV, fixed, broadband and mobile experience.