back to article Orange IPTV: Missing, presumed dead

What if you launched an IPTV service, and nobody cared? That's the question that has apparently led Orange execs to ditch plans to offer broadband customers pay TV down their phone lines. Orange UK chief Tom Alexander said yesterday that a review of the planned service had concluded it was too similar to BT Vision, Reuters …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Although

    BT Vision requires a subscription to BT Broadband, so those Orange customers wouldn't be able to get IPTV without moving to BT. Orange could offer an IPTV service as well as BT, although I guess they wouldn't have a unique marketing edge.

    Surely there's a market for platform-agnostic IPTV though?

  2. Florence

    Is there any such thing as IPTV in the UK?

    I don't understand BT Vision - it requires Freeview.

    The success of IPTV in France is due to 2 factors:

    - ADSL2 - with 24Mbps, it's easy for ISPs to use QoS to reserve 2Mbps for TV streaming

    - price : 30/35€ a month for 20Mbps ADSL, phone, and IPTV, sometimes line rental too. Depending on the ISP, the TV packages will vary, Orange recently got hold on some Ligue 1 footy games I think. But AFAIK, it's actual live streamed TV and if some of the new boxes include a Freeview/TNT tuner that's just a bonus.

    Sometimes I despair when I view Free.fr's offers and compare them to what we can get in the UK :/

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    IPtv missing presumed dead?

    A bit like El Reg's former occasional HypeyTV columns/columnist then?

    We'll soon see if Murdoch makes anything of HypeyTV with the ex-Homechoice now-Tiscali stuff, if he decides to open up the petty cash for it, but when it worked it wasn't really HypeyTV, it was TV over ATM. A small but commercially and technically significant difference.

  4. Aaron

    IPTV

    IPTV wont really be any good until the majority of the UK can stream high quality shows at anytime at a click of a button. Given that the vast majority of people don't gain anything with ADSL2+ (in fact most people I've seen have to swap to a ADSL 1 profile to get better speeds). This is not going to be anything special until something is done about the UK's creaking old copper last mile.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Made me laugh

    Thanks Register! I've spent over two years working on this project for Orange only to find out via the Register that the project is being binned - it would have been nice of management to tell me. Still maybe no-one will notice if I ebay the test servers!

  6. Warhelmet

    IPTV

    BBC iPlayer, etc prove that there is a demand for IPTV. True, with UK broadband speeds it can prove to be a sub-optimal experience.

    Content is the real driver. Non-instant is the big obstacle.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    RE: Made me laugh

    What you on about? We've known for quite a while that its going to be binned....

  8. Matt Brigden
    Thumb Up

    pass on iptv wheres my darn adsl2+ ?

    I want my exchange upgrading . The tv would of been nice but Id rather have a faster line .

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    RE: Made Me Laugh

    yup known for ages now that Orange TV is heading for the scrap heap, i guess your even less informed than the front-line agents, on the plus-side i got to spend 6+ months of taking no calls and reading books with my feet on the desk

    Orange should take a step towards the internet radio market, oh wait, they have, lol, still they could ditch all their ongoing projects, take the basic pay of call centre staff above minimum wage, let us have a bit of expression at work, or be ''really'' honest with customers, like letting them know they've signed up for 24 months of adsl hell, oh yeah, also ditch the call scripts and the overseas call-centres, and stop forcing us to say ''are you happy with what i've done so far?'' to every irate customer who calls in for the eighth time that day asking when their internet will be up and running again

    Peace!! :P

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