Among the European providers sharing their experiences at the TVoDSL Conference in Paris, Roger Lynch of Video Networks reveals that HomeChoice has signed up 15,000 customers to its digital television and high-speed internet service.
The IPTV service uses equipment in BT exchanges to deliver digital television and broadband data over telephone lines.
From almost a standing start, inheriting less than 4,000 subscribers, HomeChoice appears to be benefiting from a recent high profile marketing campaign. Video Networks is also steadily improving its offering, although picture quality and service availability remain issues.
Homechoice has a retail deal with BSkyB enabling customers to subscribe to Sky Sports and selected Sky Movies channels. The operator has also added telephony services and plans to launch a music download facility to allow customers to buy downloadable music tracks as they appear on screen.
The company, which recently announced that it will boost its broadband speeds up to a maximum of 4Mbps in addition to the video service, claims it is taking a 20 per cent share of new broadband subscribers in London.
“We are very pleased with the initial take up of the HomeChoice service,” said Roger Lynch, chairman and chief executive of Video Networks. “The concept of broadband delivered TV and video-on-demand is very new to the entertainment buying public and to already have 20% market share of new DSL subscribers in our coverage area so soon after our launch is a great achievement. This gives us the confidence to significantly expand our network.”
The current subscriber numbers remain a fraction of the 1.2 million homes in London that can currently be reached. This footprint is expected to rise to 2.4 million by the middle of 2005. However, while BT talks about broadband television, and cable companies ntl and Telewest have only recently begun to roll out their video-on-demand services, VideoNetworks is already gaining valuable experience in the field.