BBC Versus The Mobile Operators

You’ve read a lot (here and everywhere else) about BBC’s online/interactive efforts and its effects on the general state on UK’s online industry…everyone from newspapers, magazines to broadcast companies have butted their heads against BBC’s public remit. But you ain’t seen nothing yet…
In the mobile arena, BBC is planning to allow mobile phone users to watch video clips — and possibly whole programmes — on a large scale.
The BBC says its three-phase “appointment to view” plan for mobiles will begin in the next two months and should climax at the end of 2005 with the ability to use a mobile phone to record TV shows either by using it to programme a PVR or an interactive media player on a PC.
For the mobile phone operators, the BBC’s idea has one major flaw — it is free.
The two sides–rival TV providers and BBC–are now circling one another and throwing out a few jabs, but the BBC’s bold strategy could foreshadow full-scale fisticuffs. Also, the operators are not too happy, though they would certainly have to work with BBC to get anywhere…

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