After all the heartache, all the promises, and year and years of wasted time British Telecom’s Microsoft IPTV powered BT Vision service is finally being introduced to the British Public.
The service was launched late last year but had no advertising campaign and has only accrued 5,000 customers, many of them BT employees.
BT has high hopes that its service is so cheap, and so right for the market that it will steal around 2 to 3 million customer over the next few years, taking on Virgin Media (NTL) and Sky.
BT Vision is the TV element of a hybrid triple play, offering internet connection, voice and VoD services through a box that also acts as a DVB-T terrestrial TV set top. The existing UK DVB-T digital terrestrial service is installed in more than half of UK homes and is free to air and just requires a digital set top to be purchased for around $50.
The new 60 second advertising slots on TV for BT Vision began last weekend and are extensions of the existing corporate BT advertising campaign.
A poster campaign will also follow in the next few days and on billboards and the sides of bus stops and will take in a 200ft backlit billboard which is the biggest in Europe which is visible to around 6 million commuters a day in one of London’s stations.
BT will also use its web properties to bring customer sign ups and issue an online campaign on the home pages of MSN, Yahoo and AOL.