Cable giant Virgin Media has carried out its earlier threats by lodging an official competition complaint against Project Canvas in the UK. Canvas claims to be an open standard for delivering subscription-free broadband internet TV services directly into homes via your ISP and special £100-£200 set-top-boxes (mix of freeview/freesat and other tech).

The complaint is 85 pages long and claims that the Joint Venture (JV) partners, which include the BBC , ITV , BT , TalkTalk , Channel 4 and Arqiva, have failed to uphold Canvas's original "open standards" principals. VM alleges that Canvas is now anti-competitive, a proprietary closed platform, and will limit consumer choice instead of expanding upon it.



Regular readers will recall that the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) had to throw out its own investigation of Canvas in May 2010 because it did not have jurisdiction to review it under the merger provisions of the Enterprise Act 2002 (original news).

Canvas approached the OFT on its own merit, with the aim of seeking a formal clarification. However the OFT's decision did not preclude the application of other Competition law provisions and relevant legislation, only that they did not have the right powers to investigate.

The BBC Trust ultimately approved Project Canvas for launch at the end of June 2010 (here), albeit alongside some fairly minor conditions. Canvas had been due to complete by early next year, with TalkTalk already planning its own related TV service for launch sometime in 2011 (here), although Virgin's latest move is likely to delay such efforts.

Ofcom had previously warned the BBC Trust that Canvas needed to go further if it wanted to avoid being seen as a service that could discriminate against any non-Joint Venture partners. One suggestion was that it should be made available to services other than just Freeview and Freesat (e.g. Virgin Media's platform). Failure to do this properly could have a very negative impact.