Ok, makes much more sense now.

In reply to a post by connormill:

To be honest I'm not sure, but I think that Sky would only pay BT for the link between the Cab and the Exchange.

The link from the Exchange to the Internet is still part of Sky's existing backhaul network.

Certainly where Sky have their equipment installed, this is possible. From my understanding BTO will manage the cabling from the telephone exchange to a customer's property. At the exchange it will then be connected to Sky's LLU equipment and from there onto their backhaul.

Sky has also been making noises over wanting to use BT's infrastructure to install their own cabling.

There are a few issues to resolve though:

* Price & T&Cs for FTTC or FTTP with Sky's LLU
* Price & T&Cs for FTTC or FTTP without Sky's LLU
* Upgrade path for existing customers in & out of contract
* Launch date

In reply to a post by ScubaGirl:

There are a few issues to resolve though:

* Price & T&Cs for FTTC or FTTP with Sky's LLU
* Price & T&Cs for FTTC or FTTP without Sky's LLU
* Upgrade path for existing customers in & out of contract
* Launch date

Sky don't yet use BT WBC at non-LLU exchanges even though they could use it improve the service and reduce bandwidth costs. So I don't expect Sky FTTC or FTTP at non-LLU exchanges for some time yet.

Sky must be aiming to get an FTTC/P product to market before BT completes its TV Connect and Content Connect network upgrades in the summer. BT Vision is not yet a threat to Sky TV but when BT can offer fibre broadband bundled with a wider range of linear TV channels including Sky Sports in HD and a full catch-up service they could become more of a competitor to Sky.

In reply to a post by CJ8:

but when BT can offer fibre broadband bundled with a wider range of linear TV channels including Sky Sports in HD and a full catch-up service they could become more of a competitor to Sky.

They're going to compete with Sky by offering Sky Sports? I can see a flaw in that plan.

Why pay for BT Vision when YouView is launching soon and will be available across all broadband suppliers?

http://www.youview.com/

Just make sure that you have sufficient bandwidth available.

As for BT competing with Sky, sorry but of the people whom I know who signed up to BT Vision, all dumped it very quickly.

YouView would eat into any usage allowance, and not use QoS

BT Vision has QoS and does not count towards usage allowance, why? its injected in the gap between the Access and Internet components.

The QoS is end to end, so someone doing a big download will not impact an on-demand TV programme

Let us wait and see. Since YouView hasn't been launched yet, we don't actually knows all the facts about the service. I would guess that you are correct though.

IPTV is new to the UK and as always we will have a different system to the rest of the world.

Personally I do not think that BT Vision could ever compete with Sky. This is not because of the channel line up, but simply because of accessibility. Ignoring planning laws for the sake of this argument, a dish can be located on most buildings, whether in a town or city or village in the middle of no-where.

BT constantly throttle their broadband speed. FTTC and FTTP may offer faster connection speeds, but will not be available across the whole country for several years yet.

IPTV is hardly new to the UK, BT was there before 2000 with trials

HomeChoice existed since the inception of ADSL, now part of TalkTalk.

BT Vision is not affected by the throttling, in fact it is given the priority and only needs 2 Mbps, which some 90% of the country can get, i.e. better coverage than Freeview.

Now having seen NetFlix at £5.99 in the UK, can say the quality is same as the US, and Sky needs to pay attention, £16 for movies + £10 for the HD.

Sky will be watching things, as always.

As for pricing, to add the movie packs, you can add 12 movie channels for an additional £16 per month with Sky.

As for HD, the Sky HD sub currently covers 50 HD channels, with others available for free. Admittedly you need to subscribe to their respective packages, but it is more than any other UK provider can currently manage.

Currently there is a total of 61 HD channels, including the 2 promo and 2 Sky Box Office HD channels.

For the F1 fans an additional HD channel will be added in a few months. This will be available for anyone who has the HD pack or is a Sky Sports subscriber.

There is also talk that Sky may actually open up it's Anytime+ service later this year to anyone who is not on Sky's Broadband Network. I won't attempt to count the quantity of material available already on this service, but I suspect that it is much larger than what BT can offer.

As always though we do need to ask ourselves just how much we can watch and what is of interest to each of us.

The last point is very important. How much can we watch and what is of interest to each of us.

I have no interest in entertainment channels. Sky have always annoyed me by only selling premium sports as an add-on to a basic package. Ok, for a while they offered a '0 packs + Sports' option but it still cost £18/month for the base '0 packs' compared with £19/month for 1 pack.

After recent changes my base pack News & Events (chosen because if I must have one I might as well have the one that includes Eurosport) is now part of Entertainment Extra. When the price freeze ends it may go up to £25 before the extra cost of premium sports.

If BT offer Sky Sports and ESPN in HD on their next gen Vision IPTV service without the requirement for an expensive basic package, then I will probably switch. Sky have been allowed to abuse the bundled pricing model for too long and it's about time there were alternatives like Vision, Lovefilm, Netflix etc. so we have more options to buy the content that is of interest to us without being forced to buy lots more that isn't.