Vodafone UK Prep Soft Launch of Broadband TV Service for October

Industry sources claim that Vodafone could unveil their much delayed Pay TV (IPTV) service next month, which has been designed to complement their existing fixed line home broadband, phone and mobile products as part of a quad-play bundle. But further delays are still said to be possible.

The service was originally anticipated to launch alongside Vodafone’s new home broadband product over a year ago, but it never materialised and instead we were told to expect it before the end of 2016. However the most recent update in July 2016 (here) confirmed that “field trials” for Vodafone TV were finally “underway” (at present this probably only involves existing staff).

According to the Telegraph, Vodafone TV will be an Internet streaming + on-demand service that is based off technology from Kaltura (they work with everybody from YouView to Internet connected TV developers etc.). The operator also has an established content agreement with Sky’s NOW TV platform for their mobile customers, which is likely to be extended to Vodafone TV.

At this stage we still know very little about what Vodafone UK will offer, although you can probably get a reasonably good idea by looking at the “next generation” Over The Top (OTT) TV service that is being rolled out on Vodafone’s network in Spain (this also uses Kaltura).

More details about Kaltura’s specific OTT TV solution can be found here, although it’s worth noting that the service for Vodafone Spain was designed to work with a pure fibre optic (FTTH/P) network that delivers symmetrical broadband speeds from 30Mbps and all the way up to 300Mbps.

However Vodafone should still be able to make it work well enough on a good ‘up to’ 40Mbps FTTC line in the UK, although it’s unclear whether they’ll also offer an option for slower ADSL2+ (up to 20Mbps) based connections.

Elsewhere it’s suggested that Vodafone UK has not yet been able to sign a deal that would give their customers access to BT Sport TV, although there’s still time to sort that out before launch. Rival ISPs have already been able to reach deals for BTSport content, although most of those already had the weight of an established TV platform and customer base behind them.

Suffice to say that the UK market is now swamped with Pay TV options, from the established players like Sky (Sky Broadband) and Virgin Media to the younger tribe of BT TV, EE TV and TalkTalk TV. On top of that there are also multiple independent video streaming based services and platforms from Netflix to NOW TV, Amazon Prime and so forth.

On the other hand Vodafone has recently reported a strong trend of rising uptake for their new home broadband service (here), which is likely to have been given a big boost by last month’s move to “abolish” the cost of line rental from their packages (here). Vodafone also has a strong base of existing mobile subscribers who might well be interested in a quad-play solution.

The key advantage of such a product is that it can help to stem churn by encouraging customers to stay with one provider, but launching into a crowded market is never easy.