Mark Thompson may have renewed his offer to share the BBC’s iPlayer Thursday morning, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time. No sooner had Thompson used a keynote address to say talks on partnerships are “going well”, BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) released its submission to Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report, in which it criticised the idea…
From the submission: “For many years, while claiming to adhere to the principle of platform neutrality, the BBC promoted the availability of its digital channels in ways that favoured Freeview over Sky and cable. We are concerned that the BBC is … intent on favouring its iPlayer service: through its extensive marketing and promotion; its proposal to entrench further the underlying technology platform by licensing it to other PSBs; and by its unwillingness to supply BBC content to competing on-demand video services like Sky Player (it is only willing to provide a link through to the BBC iPlayer website).”
Not just iPlayer – the proposed Project Canvas, which invites broadcasters to join an open IPTV platform, “potentially raises similar concerns”, the submission said. Sky VOD director Griff Parry this month told paidContent:UK Canvas “could potentially be quite an interesting development for us” to deliver Sky Player.
— Opposing net neutrality: “The introduction of any regulation that limits the flexibility of ISPs to manage their own network traffic (such as so called