There was a flurry of activity among pay-TV players as the week closed in the United Kingdom, with Virgin Media (formerly ntl) announcing its arrival and BSkyB launching a new digital terrestrial television (DTT) initiative.

BSkyB announced Feb. 9 its intentions to launch a new subscription service on DTT this summer. The line-up of channels on the new service would give DTT viewers access to BSkyB’s sports, movies, entertainment and news content. The sports service will include live coverage from the Barclays Premiership in soccer, for example. Sky will reveal full details, including branding, pricing and the complete channel lineup just prior to launch.

The new service will make use of existing capacity that Sky uses to broadcast Sky Three, Sky News and Sky Sports News. As a result, the channels will cease to be available via free-to-air DTT in advance of the launch of the pay-TV service. Ian Whittaker, a media equity analyst at UBS, commented in a research note that "some may be concerned about cannibalization of satellite, but Sky will control the pricing of the product, and satellite will still be a much better product, with more choice and channels (including four sports channels and nine movie offerings versus one of each on the new product, not counting many more entertainment options and news documentaries), and better functionality. However, this product should appeal to a segment of the market they have not been able to access Sky’s product thus far."

Virgin Media also launched Feb. 4 in a blaze of publicity. While there was little change in terms of pricing packages except for a new VIP service for top-end customers, Bryan Kraft, a media equity analyst at Credit Suisse, was positive that the operator will now be more competitive to BSkyB.

"We believe that the re-branding, combined with process improvements management has completed in customer service, billing, sales and provisioning, and field operations, will lead to improving subscriber metrics in [the first half of 2007] and will position ntl to be more competitive with its key rival Sky," Kraft said in a research note.

–Mark Holmes