It’s always difficult to know what to expect from a brand new shiny IPTV system. Early new customers are always slow to arrive, but that doesn’t always mean that the service is destined to be a failure. So when British Telecom’s BT Vision service reports that it has just 5,000 UK customers for the service it launched in December of last year, it’s probably unfair to suggest that it is failing.
BT itself says that this is roughly in line with the number it had expected, while others are saying that even the 5,000 are mostly made up of BT employees.
The service was 4 years coming and it’s not a short range experiment. In essence it is a VoD hybrid with broadcast digit terrestrial DVB-T, and one of the first of its type in Europe. BT will persevere with it for some years to come regardless of its success levels.
BT says that its first marketing campaigns were always going to be for the Spring, and that it was deliberately low key at launch over concerns on technology reliability. BT uses the Microsoft software but confesses that its network is not up to scratch for full broadcast IPTV, and anyway in the UK, where Freeview is so popular it would have been courting disaster to offer multicast IPTV, the company has always said.
This week BT said it has signed up more new content for the service adding films from Warner Brothers, including all the Batman films, Harry Potter and Superman, along with forthcoming TV series such as Nip/Tuck, ER and Without a Trace.