Anywhere, anytime on anything It was surely only a matter of time but this month saw the announcement that BBC One and BBC Two are to be simulcast online. "The launch of BBC One and BBC Two online completes our commitment to make our portfolio of channels available to watch on the internet. Licence fee payers will now be able to watch BBC programmes, live, wherever they are in the UK on their computers, mobile phones and other portable devices," Jana Bennett director of BBC vision said in a statement. All this talk of content being available anywhere, anytime, on multiple devices sounds a bit like a converged nirvana but as always in these nascent markets the entrance of the BBC could have huge and unexpected consequences. Francesco Caio who conducted a review into the future of the networks for the Government earlier this year commented on the potential for medium term problems in the network because of the extra capacity required: "Online television does not cause any capacity issues for the moment but in three to five years' time there could be problems that will particularly affect areas of dense population." It's likely to be some time before viewing linear broadcasting online becomes numerically significant but the network congestion is only half the problem. What now for the licence fee?  The Convergence Conversation»

Delay at Kangaroo 'Troubles come not in single spies' and all that, and this month the Competition Commission  has provisionally concluded that the proposed video on demand joint venture - codename Kangaroo - between the BBC, ITV and C4-will restrict competition in the supply of VOD services in the UK. In a summary of the provisional findings, the Commission concluded that the joint venture is likely to result in a substantial lessening of competition in the supply of UK TV VOD content at the wholesale and retail levels.  The project is already under pressure as Ashley Highfield, Kangaroo's chief executive - who launched the iPlayer while at the BBC - was poached by Microsoft. His interim replacement is Rod Henwood, a former Channel 4 executive who has been at the forefront of Kangaroo's regulatory negotiations. Kangaroo said that it "remained committed" to launching in 2009. Intellect's Digital Communications Markets Group»

Number crunching Ofcom's third International Communications Market Report into the £876 billion (E1,100bn) global digital communications market finds that UK consumers are getting a good deal for their money when buying communications services compared with people in other countries. The UK is the largest technology market in value and volume in Europe and Britons emerge from the report as a nation of gadget-savvy internet junkies - spending more time than the rest of Europe browsing the internet, social networking and playing video games. The UK also leads a comparison of 12 industrialised nations in digital television take-up and use of digital video recorders. The UK offers the cheapest mobile, basic pay-TV and broadband 'bundles', at £104 per month for a typical family household. Broadband take-up, at 60 per cent, is above the average in developed nations. What was the driver for this high take-up? The report concluded that the UK consumers' appetite for technology was driven by relatively low prices for TV and internet services. Intellect's Consumer Electronics Council»

Circuit City seeks Chapter 11 protection From the UK's burgeoning technology market to the US where Circuit City, the second largest CE retailer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from its more than 100,000 creditors this month. The press release gave no indication as to the company's future other than that it expects to continue to operate during the proceedings. In a fiercely competitive market Circuit City's demise has been attributed to a combination of unfavourable trading conditions: a tighter credit market, a downturn in consumer spending on big-ticket items and losing market share to rival Best Buy and discounters such as Wal-Mart. Intellect's Consumer Electronics Council»

A new way Advertising budgets are also shrinking in the downturn but a long heralded innovation could answer the age old advertising question of how to speak to the right people at the right time. Targeted advertising around linear TV will launch in the UK for the first time as BSkyB confirmed a service launch in 2011, this month. The company is developing what it terms targeted substitutional advertising, or Smart TV. The service will allow broadcasters to serve targeted ads to viewers in Sky+ homes, based on subscribers' personal and demographic characteristics. Targeted ads are currently served around various TV and PC-based on-demand services in the UK but the BSkyB service would be the first time targeted ads can be served around linear TV content in the UK. The service will use personal data gathered by Sky's research department and SkyView, its 20,000-strong audience panel, to target commercials to users' Sky+ boxes. The ads will then be dropped into ad breaks surrounding linear TV content. The results should be interesting. The Convergence Conversation»