South Yorkshire Digital Region ISP Reveals TV and 80Mbps Broadband Services

The almost endlessly troubled Digital Region project in South Yorkshire (UK) has gained a slight boost today after one of its newest consumer broadband ISPs, LittleBigOne, announced the launch of their first “independent network TV” (IPTV – Internet Protocol TV) service.

The new service comes in three flavours, Little TV, Big TV and Big TV+, which are bundled alongside the operators broadband and phone services. Little TV offers all the following channels within the basic subscription package of £32 per month (£75 setup): BBC TV and Radio, ITV, C4, E4, C5, Dave, Viva, Film 4, CNN (50+ channels). This also includes up to 40Mbps broadband and unlimited anytime landline calls.

Meanwhile Big TV costs £39 per month and adds a wider range of MTV channels, Bloomberg, Boomerang, Cartoon Network, VH1, and Motors TV (70+ channels in all). This package is also available with a PVR record option (Big TV+) that pushes the price up to £45.

Apparently these options also bring together local information for the region, which allows customers to access details of local transport with real time travel information along with local news and weather from their TV. Customers can also access YouTube via their TV system from launch, although most internet TV’s can do that already.

Littlebigone.com MD, Theresa Robbins, said:

“There’s great potential for all sorts of local content to be added – we could stream local council meetings for example, showcase community radio and support local events – there really is huge scope with the technology at our fingter tips but first we need to get people used to the idea of subscribing to TV services in a new way.

South Yorkshire has suffered from poor broadband speeds for years, now one of the country’s most advanced regions for digital networks, we’re really excited be able to use these to bring people TV of the future. IPTV is an entirely new (for the UK at least) way to watch TV, it will be mainstream in a few years but it’s great to be able to bring something innovation to South Yorkshire and see the region leading the way.”

It’s difficult to be blown away by the choice of channels above, especially since most are already available via Freeview, although LittleBigOne does promise to add Sky Sports and Sky Movies to their future packages. The ISP also mentions that its FTTC (non-BT) service speeds will be upgraded ‘up to’ 80Mbps in “late” April 2012, which is likely intended to combat BT’s competing rise on their similar platform.