Interview with Marc Watson, Commercial Director of BT Vision

BT Vision was launched in May last year and has gone on to record considerable subscriber growth in a short period of time, with over 150,000 installed customers using the service according to latest figures.  The service offers the Freeview channels, including Setanta Sports, plus a large library of on-demand programmes and films, as well as time-shift capabilities through the free Digital Video Recorder (DVR) included with the service. High-definition content will be offered later this year.

ipTV News: Why did BT decide to launch a TV service?

BT had been working on the service for a considerable time before its nationwide launch in May last year.  We were seeing increasing convergence of the TV and telecoms industries, around the world, with pay TV operators in the UK such as Sky moving into the telecoms arena.  Offering our customers a digital television service was a natural step for us to take.

What are the key features of BT Vision for consumers?

It’s a great way to get the best of digital TV, and a digital recorder is also included in every box, allowing consumers to store 80 hours of content recorded from the Freeview platform at the touch of a button.   The BT Vision Box connects to a BT broadband line and also allows customers to access over 7,000 programmes on-demand, with full DVD-like functionality of rewind, pause and fast forward.  Within this library there is a fantastic range of the most recent and classic movies, music and TV programmes, as well as extra interactive features such as games.  The service also offers flexibility in how customers pay for content – there are no minimum fee contracts for content packages, if they wish customers can just choose to pay for the odd Saturday night movie for example, as it suits them.  The first three series of Lost were recently made available on the service for £6 per month with the TV package, offering a significant saving over retail DVDs. And the box itself is free to BT Broadband customers. Customers love the on demand service – we recorded over a million on demand views in December alone.

How do you plan to expand the service in the future?

It’s easy to get over excited with the possibilities offered by IPTV.  We want to get the basics right first – which means our aim is to offer a first class customer service, make the service simple and pleasurable to use and offer increasingly compelling content and services, at great value.  We also seek to offer our customers a service which is genuinely different and innovative – as shown by the recently announced deal with Microsoft that BT Vision will be made available on the Xbox 360.  When coupled with the BT Vision Box, Xbox 360 users will also have access to multi-room functionality [where content stored in one room on the BT Vision V-Box can be viewed on a TV via an Xbox 360 in another room].  We are looking at offering a fully integrated home media experience – meaning our customers can access their media content and services wherever and whenever they want across all devices, and Caller ID on the TV screen is on our roadmap.

How do you see the UK’s IPTV market developing in the future?

We see significant growth for IPTV here in the UK, and it is a business that we are completely committed to.  But it is part of a the wider pay TV industry marketplace, which is a pretty challenging market and the winners are likely to be those companies like BT that have invested in the technical infrastructure to ensure the quality and timeliness of their product, backed by top customer service.