ITV to provide free broadband TV service

ITV is to launch free-to-view broadband television service, viewers will be able to download live and 30-day ‘catch-ups’ of their favourite ITV programmes for free.

Steve Weller, Head of Communications Services at independent price comparison and switching service uSwitch.com comments: “Today’s announcement that ITV is launching a free-to-view broadband television service is fantastic news for consumers, enabling them to download programmes from all four ITV channels completely free of charge, unlike Channel 4’s new online TV service.

“With over half of UK households already connected to broadband and this figure likely to rise to 80% by 2010, this service could revolutionalise the way people watch TV.

“However, we won’t see families giving up their TV’s just yet to watch programmes around their PC screen – only a small majority have their PC connected to their TV and while the two technologies are converging, it will be some time yet before we see an internet-enabled TV in every home.

“Additionally the impact of these new services is going to place a strain on broadband companies as they try to deliver the speed and capacity to give customers access to all of these programmes. The current speeds and download limits will need to be significantly increased to enable these new services to be enjoyed by the mass market, currently satisfied with a 2Mb broadband service and a 2Gb download limit.

Weller concludes: “While the service is initially free, it will be interesting to see if ITV starts to charge for premium programmes in the future and how it will meet the demands of the advertisers which it has so relied upon in the past.”