Posted: 12th Oct, 2009 By: MarkJ
The CEO of BT's Internet TV ( IPTV ) service - BT Vision, Marc Watson, has warned that it will miss its target of having 2m-3m subscribers by December 2010. The target, which was originally set by BT CEO Ian Livingston, will apparently not be reached within this timeframe and a figure of 1m is more likely (BT Vision had nearly 450k subscribers in June 2009).
BT Vision's CEO, Marc Watson, told ipTV News:"We have not yet found the best way of explaining what the benefits are to consumers, and what BT Vision stands for."
Several reasons are given for the expectation of poor performance, not least the delay of Project Canvas and Sky's (BSkyB) unwillingness to lower the subscription fees for access to its premium content; we note that Ofcom is currently investigating that.
The good news is that Ofcom recently lifted some restrictions that had been placed upon BT, allowing the operator to prepare a new range of potentially cheaper service bundles. Watson revealed that a bundle of TV (BT Vision), broadband and fixed-line telephone services could be expected to surface next year.