UK ISP PlusNet YouView TV Trials “going very well”, But Still No ETA

PlusNet has informed ISPreview.co.uk that their 8 month old customer trial of a YouView (IPTV) based broadband TV service is “going very well“, but sadly even after all this time they’re still unable to give any indication of when a commercial launch might occur.

The service was first mooted last year after the ISPs parent company, BT, suggested that they wanted to develop a lower cost YouView service in order to take on TalkTalk’s rival product (here). PlusNet had already been experimenting with just such a service internally and this was soon made available to their existing customers (i.e. those able to achieve a 15Mbps minimum download speed and with a working TV aerial) via a trial (here).

The customer trial itself finally got underway at the start of 2014 and ISPreview.co.uk has recently heard rumours of a Q4-2014 launch, although PlusNet said they “have not confirmed commercial launch dates at this time“. In fairness, PlusNet’s trials have a tendency to drag on and indeed they’ve had an FTTP product in trial for a very long time, which is perhaps understandable given the services limited coverage of around 150,000 UK premises.