Ofcom’s YouView Opinion Is Due; Here’s The Background

Ofcom is due to detail this week how, if at all, it will respond to the complaints submitted about the YouView connected-TV venture by Virgin Media (NSDQ: VMED), IP Vision, Six TV, United For Local Television and the Open Source Consortium.

For full background, see our YouView topic index, with coverage dating back to its conception in 2008.

Update: A last-minute submission from Sky has delayed Ofcom’s opinion until next week, Guardian.co.uk reports.

The former Project Canvas is owned by the BBC, ITV (LSE: ITV), Channel 4, Channel 5, BT (NYSE: BT), TalkTalk and Arqiva to standardise the delivery of VOD over broadband to internet-enabled televisions, and to introduce new content and services options through some kind of “apps” system.

The competition context…

Canvas submitted itself in March for a competition test by the Office of Fair Trading, which came back declaring Canvas could not be capable of breaching anti-trust rules because, despite being a joint venture, it is not a merger of the companies involved. But that doesn’t mean Ofcom won’t look specifically at competition issues through a media lens.

When it prohibited Project Kangaroo in 2009, the Competition Commission ordered for the future