Updated: BT Vision off to a slow start

 

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By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 9 Nov 2007 at 09:29

BT has only managed to sell 60,000 of its BT Vision boxes since launch, the company has revealed.

When the IPTV-enabled PVR was unveiled last December, BT claimed that it was aiming for "hundreds of thousands" of users by the end of 2007.

BT now claims that its target was always 100,000 customers by the end of December 2007 and that it remains on track to reach that figure. "The original wording was a bit loose, I admit, but we have clarified this point on numerous occasions over the past year - at our Q1 results in July we talked about the 100k target at length and explained how we would reach it," a BT spokesman claims.

BT Vision provides an 80GB Freeview PVR with video-on-demand over a broadband connection. A range of content is offered, including movies, catch-up TV and sport including Premiership League football games and PGA golf.

At the time the company also estimated that it would have 2-3 million customers in the medium term, a target that currently looks some way off, but which BT says it's still confident of achieving.

The experience of PC Pro's own Rachel Zamorski might explain why BT Vision is not exactly flying off the shelves.