IPTV growth has been a slow thing in the UK and there have been a few questions about that, mainly along the line of the technology and how to excite the customers about that. This is missing the point as ‘normal’ customers do not really care about the technology – they care about what it does for them. The primary thing is … CONTENT. The service that is successful has what they want to watch. You can see this in the success of the Deutsche Telekom IPTV service after it acquired the rights to top flight German soccer, which is credited with being behind the increase in the order book for the service in the last quarter.
This is the understanding that BSkyB has in the UK, which accounts for its success in a market that saw Satellite dishes as a sign of ‘lower class’ in its early days – now if you want the best in Sport and Movie content then it is the best, if not the only, place to go. I just hope that the growing IPTV providers in the UK can learn from this – that it is not about the tech, it is about the content and services they provide.