BT promises HD for all

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 18 Dec 2006 at 17:29

BT's launch of BT Vision raised a few questions as to how the company, which now has content to its arsenal, is to position itself against Sky, which now offers Internet access.

We caught up with Richard Griffiths, Director of Technology Strategy and Development at BT Vision, to talk us through how this battle of the behemoths is going to be fought, particularly when it comes to HD.

Sky's HD ambitions are already well-known, but BT Vision has HD among its roll call of services. It's intriguing quite how BT can deliver this to a broad spectrum of the population, many of whom are on a 2Mb line.

'What I can say is that HD is on our roadmap,' said Griffiths. 'If we hadn't signed the sports deal it would be sooner.' He said it made more sense when they crunched the numbers to do the sports deal first, as that would bring in more subscribers as things currently stand.

'The roll out of HD is dependent on a range of factors. The technical side is something we know we can do. But we need to decide when it's financially viable, as these are massive files and cost a lot to distribute. It depends on when the market is ready.

'We already have the set-top box and back-end infrastructure for HD,' said Griffiths. 'The set top box already reads HD signals in 720p or 1080i resolutions and on the back there is an HDMI convertor, plus output options in the menu structure'.

Even so, the weakest link to BT Vision's HD equation remains the last mile connection. Griffiths told us that even by BT Vision's maths, streaming HD will be a push. 'We estimate, and we haven't finalised the HD profile yet, but you'd need between 8 and 10mbps for H264. Let's call it 10Mbps, which is something like six times the bit rate needed for standard definition video.

'On a standard ADSL connection the throughput can go down to 400Kbps during peak hours - 10am - 6pm. Outside peak hours you can get up to 8Mbps. So it's hugely variable.

'I suspect, given our current network, that for HD Video on Demand, you would need to order it a day in advance. We need to be sure of a consistent customer experience.'

Griffiths insists that although 'the ordering experience would be different,' BT Vision will still deliver 'fantastic HD Video on Demand'.

He described it as more akin to BlockBuster, without the need to go out to the store and pick up the DVD.

Streamed HD IP broadcasts are an altogether different animal. 'Streaming would be lovely for us,' said Griffiths. 'But we're dependent upon our network provider [BT wholesale]. We're not going to be able to that until 21CN.'

He said BT was looking at a '2008 time frame,' for streamed HD, with the roll out of ADSL 2+ and potentially VDSL technologies to boost bandwidths across existing copper connections. However, neither of these are the panacea to the ills of streaming HD content on the BT network. 'Neither [ADSL 2+ or VDSL] helps you extend the reach of the exchange, as it doesn't overcome the issue of line noise on long lines,' he said.

'We put our requirements into BT Wholesale. We're discussing requirements for 2007/8,' he said. However, BT Retail has no more weight with BT wholesale than any other ISP on which technologies are adopted into the network. 'BT wholesale has policies and tries to address as much of the population as possible,' said Griffiths.

The problem for BT then, is that it is difficult for it, or any other service provider, to distinguish itself from its competitors when you are so reliant on the technologies of a third party network. But fortunately for BT Retail, it's in a game where size is everything.