Digital TV News

BT Vision is ‘UK’s fastest growing pay-TV service’

Thursday 3 November, 2011

By Kelvin Goodson

BT’s digital TV service gained twice as many customers as pay-TV rivals Sky and Virgin Media between July and September

BT Vision is now the “fastest growing pay-TV service” in the UK.

BT’s digital TV service was taken up by 41,000 new households between July and September, according to the telecom giant’s latest financial results.

This is twice the number of new customers that signed up to Sky and Virgin Media’s pay-TV services over the three-month period combined, said BT.

It is also the highest number of new BT Vision customers for more than two years, taking the total number of UK households signed up to the service to around 640,000.

BT also gained 166,000 new home broadband customers over the quarter, up by 46% on the same time last year.

It is likely that this has driven take up of BT Vision, as the service is only available to those who subscribe to either BT Total Broadband or BT Infinity, BT’s superfast broadband package.

This is because BT Vision is a hybrid digital and internet TV service. Subscribers receive free-to-air terrestrial channels via set-top box and aerial as normal, but catch-up and on-demand TV is delivered via the internet by connecting the set-top box to the BT router.

According to a report published yesterday, by television industry analysts Digital TV Research, the number of TV sets connected to the internet worldwide will hit 551 million by 2016, up from 124 million at the end of last year.

This will mean 20% of television sets will be connected to the web by a built-in connection, a games console, set-top box or other means in five years time, up from 6% at the end of 2010.