BT's Richard Young insists that the company's involvement in Project Canvas does not spell the end of BT Vision, believing that the company can benefit from serving as an aggregator of both free and paid-for content.
BT is one of the partners in Project Canvas, which is awaiting the final approval of the BBC Trust, but already has its own IPTV offering, BT Vision, in the market.
Vision has hardly been the success that BT hoped for, and Sky's Mike Darcey recently went on record as suggesting that BT was using Canvas as an opportunity to re-launch its television offering.
Aggregator
Speaking at the IPTV World Forum, Young, the Business Development Director of BT Vision, admitted that Project Canvas will bring more competition to BT Vision, but remains confident that a BT Vision with Canvas package will prove irresistible to consumers.
"We will continue to provide BT vision to our customers," said Young. "We need to aggregate key content and we see services which we think will come on to Canvas as complimentary
"We can see a role for us as aggregating free content but also the best pay content as a on overall package with services."
With Canvas designed to be an open platform that could feasibly bring IPTV from any number of other companies, Young confessed that competition to be the most successful Canvas platform would be big, but he believes that BT is ready for the fight.
"We face more competition...but we are ready to accept that challenge to provide what's best for our consumers."
