Welcome to Switched On, your whistle-stop tour around the big news stories breaking in digital communications this month. Forward this email to a friend

Converging Media: The Olswang Convergence Consumer Survey 2008 'Converging Media: The Olswang Convergence Consumer Survey 2008', newly published, shows respondents from the British public are adopting an on-demand lifestyle of choice and control enabled by converging technologies. The widespread take-up of online TV services like the BBC iPlayer, along with significant penetration and use of Sky+ and on-demand TV services (such as Virgin On Demand) is delivering a wholesale change to the way in which respondents relate to television programmes and, to a lesser extent, movies.

To read more go to www.olswang.com/convergence08/»

iPlayer: the move from PC to TV We begin at the BBC where the iPlayer, the much celebrated and incredibly popular TV catch-up service, looks set to make the jump from the PC to the TV in the not too distant future. The BBC is encouraging TV and set-top box makers to adopt an open IPTV platform it hopes to develop. Confirming details of the rumoured Project 'Canvas', future media and technology director Erik Huggers said Auntie is mulling building an open industry standard that would put web video on the lounge TV. Huggers explained the rationale as avoiding the death by a thousand cuts that comes with targeting multiple devices. "If today were on the Nokia N96 and tomorrow we have to be on 30 other different mobile phones, do we have to do a separate build for every device, or can we do something more of an open industry standard?" he asked. This is an exciting innovation and makes the prospect of the internet hitting the TV in the living room - something much discussed but rarely seen -  a real possibility. Incidentally, the Beeb's Huggers is a confirmed speaker at Intellect's Consumer Electronics Conference on 02 July 2009 where he's sure to broach this very subject. Get it in the diary now. Keep me posted about the 2009 Consumer Electronics Conference.

More about Intellect's Consumer Electronics Council»

Best Buy, Carphone see 200 stores by 2013 As the bears stalk the economies of the world, most companies are looking to draw in on any large capital expenditure projects. In such a context, Carphone Warehouse CEO Charles Dunstone's announcement that his company, and Best Buy of the US, are planning to open up to 200 large consumer electronics stores in Europe by 2013 can be seen as a ray of light in an otherwise gloomy retail environment. The sharp economic downturn in Europe has raised concerns about the timing of the joint venture, to be called Best Buy Europe, given flat-screen televisions and new computers are often the types of goods that consumers strike off their shopping lists in tougher times. Dunstone, brushed off such concerns, insisting it was a "brilliant time to launch." "It is the best time to find property, it is the best time to hire people," the entrepreneur told the FT. Best Buy's yellow ticket logo will be coming to the UK in the middle of 2009, with up to five stores by the year end.

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Mobile to usurp fixed? We've spent a good amount of time here at Switched On focusing on the fixed broadband market and the Next Generation Access (NGA) issue, its dynamics, convolutions and business models. However last month came an intriguing report from Analsys Mason that highlighted the invasive and disruptive role mobile broadband could play in the NGA debate. The report forecasts that by 2013, 47 per cent of European broadband subscriptions will use mobile networks and nearly a quarter of broadband-equipped sites will use mobile-only. "Fixed operators are currently underestimating the scale of the threat of mobile broadband," says the report's main author Rupert Wood, who argues that a repeat of fixed-mobile voice substitution will play out. The competitive aspect that mobile could then bring to bear on the fixed market could see NGA developments happening at a quicker pace. Watch this space.

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The pirates are in retreat! At long last, some good news for the beleaguered music industry. Legal music downloads have outstripped pirated tracks for the first time in the UK, according to a survey by Entertainment Media Research (EMR). The EMR survey of 1,500 consumers found that 51 per cent legally purchased digital downloads. It's the first time the legal figure has outweighed the number of those who download illegally. Illegal downloading also fell to 39 per cent from 43 per cent year-on-year. However profits must also be down as digital download is much cheaper than those expensive CD's that were sold for so long. Anyway, in this, as in all things in the digital comms marketplace, competition and innovation have been key. This shift has been attributed to a growth in the number of legal download services launched by companies including Nokia, MySpace, Play.com, Tesco and Sky to vie with the dominant download source of them all, Apple's itunes.

The Convergence Conversation - everyone's talking about it»

Kangaroo bounces back? And finally, and with a nice sense of symmetry, we end with the BBC. Kangaroo, the online video joint venture between the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV, which had appeared to have been kicked into the long grass by the UK's Competition Commission, now looks set to launch by mid-2009 according to recent documents made available.   Content on the on-demand site will be made available in various ways  - either on an advertising-funded free to the consumer basis, or by paying a rental fee - and on a permanent basis. It is anticipated that ITV and Channel 4's home websites, as well as the BBC's iPlayer, will continue to offer catch-up series, but that Channel 4's 4oD service will close. Service launch is subject to approval from the Competition Commission, company Boards and, in the case of the BBC, the BBC Trust.

The Convergence Conversation - everyone's talking about it»