BT’s TV boss on Tuesday said it is too early to discuss the integration plan for EE’s TV service but said the U.K. incumbent can learn a lot from the operator’s approach to the market.
BT in February finalised its £12.5 billion deal to acquire the country’s biggest mobile operator, EE. Both companies, particularly the latter, are fairly recent entrants to the TV market, and both are pursuing different strategies.
EE TV "is an interesting service – it’s well-packaged," said Alex Green, director of TV at BT, during TV Connect in London.
EE launched EE TV in October 2014. It consists of a set-top-box (STB) with a host of eye-catching features, such as a remote control app for Android and iOS devices, the ability to transfer content instantly from a handset to a TV by flicking the screen upwards, and a multiscreen feature that can simultaneously stream live or recorded content to up to four devices.
The service comes free with EE’s fixed broadband tariffs, but does not offer any premium channels, relying wholly on free content.
"The big missing piece is paid content, whereas BT has big ambitions in paid content," noted Green on Tuesday.
Indeed, BT has been in the TV market since late 2006, but its strategy ramped up significantly with the acquisition of Premier League football rights in June 2012, and the launch of a YouView STB in September that same year.
BT ended 2014 with 1.1 million TV customers, up by 134,000 compared to a year ago. EE does not break out its TV customers, but in its Q1 financial report on Monday, the company attributed its best ever quarter for fixed broadband net additions to EE TV. EE ended March with 884,000 fixed broadband customers, up from 834,000 at the end of December 2014.
"We can learn a lot from what they (EE) have done…especially around the integration with mobile," Green said.
However, it is too early to discuss how EE TV will be integrated into BT, he said.
"The acquisition hasn’t even gone through yet," he said.
