News report on the Guardian newspaper web site (pointed out by Ryan Carson of Carsonified media – thanks) has put it that the BBC is mulling of the sharing of the iPlayer technology with Channel 4 and ITV. This sounds logical until you realise that it could be Kangaroo/Seesaw by the backdoor. I have been following the competition discussions about the Kangaroo service and I do err on the side that it would be too big in the market place in the same vein that having only one shop on the high street would be. Offering the technology out from the BBC that was developed through public funding seems fine enough as long as that technology sharing is NOT infrastructure sharing as that would act to freeze out other players as the British public would be able to get all their catch-up services from just one place, rather than having a real choice in content provision.
I personally see nothing wrong in the sharing of technology, architecture and design solutions for online video to jump start the players, as I see that after the short term there would be product divergence come into play anyway as these companies do compete for viewers eyeballs.