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NewsGlobe: Today's News
IPTV 2007: IPTV Is Next-Gen Sky+, Claims Tiscali
CEO Targets Same ‘Subscription-Free’ Market As BT Vision
by Iain Morris
ISP Tiscali threw down the gauntlet before the UK’s pay-TV
providers today, announcing that its newly launched IPTV
service represents the ‘next generation of Sky+.'
Speaking at the IPTV World Forum in London this morning,
CEO Mary Turner said that Tiscali TV will plug a gap in the UK
market for customers who ‘want more than five channels but
don’t necessarily want to pay a high monthly subscription.’
“We see huge potential for an alternative IPTV platform
among the 13 million UK households that do not take a pay
TV service at present,” says Turner.
Available to consumers since 1 March, Tiscali TV will go head
to head against not only the pay TV services offered by BSkyB
and cable operator Virgin Media but also the IPTV service
launched by UK incumbent BT in early December.
And there appears to be little that distinguishes Tiscali TV
from BT Vision. Both appear to use Freeview – a free-to-air
DTT service that offers consumers more than 30 TV channels –
as the foundation for ‘subscription-free’ offer that aims to
attract users to a library of VOD content to generate
additional revenue.
Like BT before it, Tiscali is hoping that a competitive triple-
play service – bundling telephony, TV, and broadband for a
monthly fee of £19.99 – will attract users not tempted by
more expensive satellite and cable offers.
Turner was not available to answer questions on how Tiscali’s
strategy would differ from that of BT, which has a much larger
base of broadband subscribers (10 million versus Tiscali’s 1.7
million), but she reckons that the ‘on-demand flexibility’ of
IPTV gives ISPs a major advantage over the cable and
satellite providers in this market.
“Sixty-three percent of consumers questioned during a Tiscali
survey in 2006 said they wanted an on-demand service,” says
Turner.
Like others, Turner sees PCCW – which claims to be the
world’s largest IPTV provider with more than 750,000
subscribers – as a shining example of the IPTV promise, but
Tiscali may struggle to replicate the success of the Hong Kong
operator unless it can boast a similar portfolio of content.
“Exclusivity is absolutely crucial,” said PCCW’s strategy
director Paul Berriman during the same session.
But while PCCW can claim that a number of its 100+ channels
are unavailable through other pay TV providers, Tiscali is
arguably dependent on a watered-down version of the Sky
and Virgin Media packages that have been available to UK
consumers for some years, albeit for a costlier service.
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