BT Vision to miss subscriber target

BT Vision chief executive Marc Watson has admitted the IPTV service will miss the 2-3 million target set by group chief executive Ian Livingston for December 2010.

The difficulties were acknowledged by Watson’s predecessor Dan Marks in an interview earlier this year. Watson believes one million subscribers would be attainable, representing a doubling of the present figure.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Watson blamed the lack on sports content from BSkyB, and is looking to Ofcom’s review of the pay-TV market to redress the situation. BT, which does offer the new ESPN channel, has held talks with Sky but as been unable to reach agreement.

Watson also says the telco has found the transition to an entertainment provider difficult: “We have not yet found the best way of explaining what the benefits are to consumers, and what [BT Vision] stands for,” he says in the interview.

Next year BT will commence a new marketing offensive designed to better explain its own triple play proposition. The IPTV service has already featured in television commercials and has been the subject of cold calls made to some of its 4.8 million broadband subscribers.