BT TV offensive looks defensive?

BT positioned its TV service trailer announcement (which hit the press yesterday) as setting out its vision (see press release).

From a comms perspective it looked a bit rushed, no quite clear, no quite confident enough. The result was that it was clear to some (e.g. Enders Analysis, quoted in The Times) that it was a defensive move in response to BSkyB’s split with them and acquisition of Easynet.

We knew BT would be rolling out a service, and we knew roughly what it would look like. What we didn’t and still don’t know is what their winning strategy and pricing structure will be.

The real news was the choice of Philips for a set-top box and the emphasis on PVR (personal video recorder) technology.

NB: I didn’t mention it at the time, but BT have also poached BSkyB marketer James Soames. See Brand Republic for the full story. It’s war, alright!

My heart says "Woo-hoo! IPTV – bring it on!" while my head stands by my previous post about BSkyB being better positioned to win this battle from a customer service / management point of view.

There’s some really good analysis out there of the implications of BT and BSkyB squaring up (as predicted by your prescient Open blog) – I’ll picking over some of this at the weekend and posting some thoughts and a round-up.

One last question – where’s Microsoft in all of this? Give it a couple of weeks?

Leave a Reply