ADSL Broadband
Wireless Broadband
Unlimited Broadband
Student Broadband
Laptop Broadband
Tiscali add missing Sky channels to TV platform 
Tiscali have turned up the heat on Virgin Media by sealing a deal with Sky which will see the very same channels, broadcast rights of which are at the core of the current Virgin/Sky courtroom debate, to be made available to Tiscali broadband subscribers who can receive their IPTV service, Tiscali TV.
Tiscali recently snuck into third place in the UK Broadband league table, behind Virgin and BT, and is likely to announce details of taking over Pipex soon – if the deal Sky has the desired affect, Tiscali could overtake Virgin by the end of the year and begin to compete directly with broadband and phone market leader BT in the same three markets – broadband, phone and IPTV.
BT is believed to be adding around 2,000 BT Vision customers a week, although exact figures are hard to come by, due to Ofcom not counting BT Vision as a full IPTV service, as the majority of its content is delivered via the Freeview platform. It is estimated that around 1.7 million customers have signed up for Tiscali TV.
Virgin have experienced significant customer migration over the whole Sky debacle – losing 47,000 customers in the last three months – but broadband was one area where Sky couldn’t touch Virgin, until now. Despite Sky unbundling in exchanges faster than anyone else, they currently cannot service as many punters with broadband as Virgin can, so Sky have done the smart thing by empowering the ISP which most directly threatens Virgin’s position.
Sky will do everything they can to make life difficult for Virgin as the Government has commissioned an enquiry into Sky’s acquisition of a stake in ITV, and more recently, Ofcom have, at least momentarily, scuppered Sky’s plans to launch pay-per-view channels on Freeview – both of these inquiries were instigated at the behest of Virgin.
2 Comments »Posted by Tom on June 29th 2007 in BT Broadband, Broadband, Pipex, Sky Broadband, Tiscali, Virgin Media
Similar Posts:
- Setanta and Tiscali tie the knot on Sports
- We are curious, Orange
- Tiscali’s Triple Play Christmas Present
- Virgin 1 prepares for launch with the Terminator on board
- Tiscali promise further investment in UK LLU
2 Responses to “Tiscali add missing Sky channels to TV platform”
Leave a Reply
Subscribe to our feed to keep up to date with all the latest Broadband Blog posts »
Dave said on 02 Jul 2007 at 3:19 pm #
Seems like Tiscali is really pushing themselves.
It would make sense, from a Sky point of view, to give their channels to Tiscali, one to rub Virgin’s nose in it and two they are far less of a threat.
Sky can be seen to be doing the ‘decent’ thing by allowing others to have channels, just not Virgin Media. The saga continues.
J Anderson said on 03 Jul 2007 at 1:22 pm #
I’m a Sky customer but still not really taken with the whole IPTV scenario. To much in it’s infancy to change to, especially with the variation in connection reliability, but it’s about time Sky started looking at their own pricing structure. They just seem to raise prices while others lower them!!!