In a word no. Why?

Neither BT nor Virgin make content.

And all the broadbandwidth in the world is hopeless if you've nothing to watch or engage with.

SKY invests in the content that it knows people want to watch. So even if it doesn't ultimately deliver the service to you, does it matter if it charges the people who do?

I am inclined to agree but I wouldnt be shorting BSkyB as they have plenty of time to react. Speaking from personal experience though I am currently in an area that doesnt have virgin fibre optic so I cant use them for TV, and cant get all of the Freeview channels, which means BT isnt an option either so I am consequently a Sky user. Come March that changes as I will be able to get full Freeview connectivity. In turn that means I will switch my phone, TV and broadband over to BT. The benefit of doing this for me is that there will be more TV on demand ie stuff I and my family actually want to watch when I want to watch it, and I wont be paying for the hundreds of channels of drivel that Sky seem happy to promote. They may produce content but 100% of it is tosh. I think as the economic downturn bites more and more people will review what they are paying every month to Sky and look for cheaper options, particularly when competitors can offer more of what you want rather than less. On demand is clearly the future so yes, unless Sky changes the model they have a problem. I must confess to being slightly biased, and possibly slightly unusual for the average sky customer in that I was absolutely disgusted by the phone hacking saga and have had enough of giving my money to Mr Murdoch's family so that has also been a factor in my decision to change, plus I am not a huge sports fan, where Sky have you by the short and curlies. However my understanding is that people like google and Virgin are beginning to look at that market so Sky's monopoly is unlikely to last.

Sky Anytime+ and Sky Go products are content on demand and anywhere you please and are currently available from BSkyB that is not a part of "Murdoch Empire".

Sky is bound by Oftel rules to supply the hundreds of channels on the Astra platform.

Satellite is a superior medium than broadband and once liberalised merits will be appreciated better.

The point here isnt that Sky offer on demand services. So do Channel 4, ITV, Channel 5 and the BBC. The issue is whether you access those services via BT, Virgin or Sky. Over the last decade Sky has built up a franchise based on offering 100's of channels that werent previously available, then offering Sky+ then offering HD. That model is now being superseded by an internet piped on demand model. No one really cares whether you access content via satellite, wirelessly, or via cable so long as it all works, and all the providers will work to see that it does. The issue is overwhelmingly one of packaging appropriate content, ease of use and cost. At the moment Sky look vulnerable but this doesnt mean to say that will always be the case. Should they for example integrate on demand content from other providers into their boxes then they may get somewhere. This is the area where BT and Virgin are way ahead, not because they are geniuses but because it has been the only way for them to compete.

And the last time I checked BskyB are very much part of the Murdoch empire with Newscorp owning a controlling stake, thus rendering them odious in multiplicitous ways. None of this means BskyB are doomed, its just not quite as rosy an environment for them as they might have you believe.

I have the total Sky package and find the choice is fantastic.Without the pioneer investment and initiative of the Murdochs this wouldn't have been available.

Remember the old 3/4/5 channel days? Replacing that was Rupert Murdoch's big achievement and he put his whole empire on the line to do it. Nobody else could have pulled this off, certainly not risk-averse corporates. It needed one man with a big vision and loads of experience. And I'm not even a fan of his! But that is the truth.
However, we also have NTL (unwisely renamed Virgin after the sleazy empire of Branson) and we also have TalkTalk.

NTL, the name I will continue to use for my e-mail account,offers a vastly superior product for broadband and there is no arguing with this. We run websites and need fast connectivity.
So when a Sky salesman rang me this week, to offer phones and broadband, I said no - a service sent down BT's old copper cables is nowhere near good enough.I haven't the time or patience to wait for images to appear on screen......

He said Sky is doing an experiment somewhere with new fibre-optic cables. I said: "Come back to me when you can offer fast broadband, with reliable delivery, and we will talk if you are cheaper than NTL." Our son unwisely switched to Sky for broadband and it is far from excellent. It depends how far you are from one of BT's junction boxes, as I understand it.
Meanwhile NTL also throw in a phone for only £3 a month extra, so we have a backup phone.

We use TalkTalk for our main fixed line phone as they do a great deal which gives us unlimited "free" calls to America and cheap foreign calls elsewhere. Terrific! Don't like the company - I recently reported them to ther regulator for constantly harrassing me with sales calls, despite the fact that we are ex-directory and registered for no sales calls.

However, we don't have to love our suppliers or the people who run them. Just go for the best deal and technical excellence.

What was I saying about the future of satellite broadcast?

From today's FT
January 31, 9:22am
BSkyB joins battle for internet TV subscribers
British Sky Broadcasting Group has stepped up its battle against online movie providers Lovefilm and Netflix with the launch of an internet TV service, as subscriber growth among the pay-TV group's traditional viewer base slows.

Content is easily bought in, even much BBC content is outsourced.




Speaking as a telecoms engineer, I think you're being somewhat harsh on the OP. He's thinking 10+ years ahead - technology such as multi-cast is being rolled out onto the internet, this could well knock satellite TV of it's perch.





Any engineer or physicist will tell you that signals prefer wire to the air, why do you think your landline offers better speech than your mobile?

Richard Barnson is a very hard nosed business man despite his laid back public persona.