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Kate Holton
LONDON: Britain's BSkyB will launch a video-on-demand service and develop its Sky+ digital recorder to boost its pay TV offering in 2007, while keeping an eye on the performance of its rival NTL Inc's broadband service.
In an interview, BSkyB's Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Darroch said the company would be interested to see how NTL's broadband fares but he was confident in Sky's own service which was launched last year.
NTL will rebrand as Virgin Media early this year.
"Obviously (NTL) will relaunch and we'll see what that brings. In business you are constantly looking to move forward and do what you do (but) the (NTL) broadband is of interest to us because that's a major initiative we've got going right now."
BSkyB impressed the industry in November when it said it had around 1 million registrations of interest in its broadband service and 113,000 orders.
"We're making good progress there," he said, referring to the rate at which registrations of interest had been turned into signed-up customers.
Darroch said BSkyB would focus on extending its broadband service, continuing a high standard of customer service and developing its technology on such services as Sky+ and video on demand.
He said the Sky+ digital video recorder had passed the 2 million sales mark ahead of target, putting it on track to pass its goal of 25 per cent of subscribers owning a Sky+ recorder well in advance of the original target of 2010.
"I think we'll smash through that a lot earlier," he said. "With a fair wind we might even get to it by this year."
FAST FORWARD
The service allows customers to record, pause live TV and fast-forward through adverts. Under a new development for 2007, viewers will also be able to programme their Sky+ box remotely via the Internet on www.sky.com.
While some viewers did opt to fast forward adverts, Darroch said the service was not all bad news for advertisers as it could offer the opportunity to show ads targeted at different customers. Viewers in Sky+ homes also tended to watch more television than average.
Viewers will also be able to enjoy a selection of the week's best programmes on-demand under a new service which will be unveiled later in the year.
"Storage (of programmes) will get cheaper and smaller so that means we'll be able to put more storage in a box and ... as that capacity increases the amount of products and the range of choices we'll be able to offer customers will just grow and grow," he said.
On the acquisitions side, Darroch said the company was not considering buying anything at the moment and was waiting to hear from Britain's regulators over its purchase of a 17.9 per cent stake in commercial broadcaster ITV.
Britain's Office of Fair Trading and media regulator Ofcom are investigating the purchase after NTL, another possible suitor for the British company, complained.
"We've made our position clear in terms that this is a financial investment and we think the prospects for ITV with the new management are pretty good and we're going to be a long term and supportive shareholder," he said.
Shares in BSkyB, which is 39 per cent owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, were up 0.9 per cent at 526-1/2 pence by 1525 GMT.
Source: Reuters
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