BBC and BT join forces while Virgin steals on-demand crown

Virgin Media and BT Vision have both secured new video on-demand deals, it was announced today.

BT Vision will be phasing in BBC iPlayer from early next month, following a bumper October for the service.

20 million of the record 139 million iPlayer programme requests were delivered to televisions, according to Daniel Danker, BBC’s general manager for programmes and on-demand.

Meanwhile, Virgin Media will be carrying programmes from all of Five’s channels from this month, a deal BT Vision failed to replicate.

Along with Freesat (although not Sky’s new on-demand service) Virgin Media already includes BBC iPlayer in its service.

This means that today’s announcements give Virgin Media the on-demand crown, as the only UK TV provider to offer such content from all four of the main terrestrial broadcasters.

Following BBC and BT’s recent collaboration for YouView, BT may be hoping that its latest move will lure new customers to its fibre-optic “super-fast” broadband service,  where it again competes with Virgin Media.

For further information, see www.btplc.com/news and pressoffice.virginmedia.com