TalkTalk Sets Out to Launch Pay TV Service in UK

Britain’s second biggest broadband service provider TalkTalk, which is gearing up to launch pay TV service, asked French networking giant Alcatel-Lucent to build a Content Delivery Network in the U.K.

Alcatel said it would build the network, making best use of the technology it gained from Velocix, which it acquired recently.

Under a three year contract, TalkTalk will make use of Velocix (News - Alert) solution to deliver U.K. television content directly to subscribers’ set-top boxes and PCs.

TalkTalk is not the first to launch pay TV in the U.K., Virgin Media, BSkyB (News - Alert) and BT are already offering similar service to their customers.

Analysts said lack of a TV service has weakened TalkTalk’s competitive edge as many consumers preferred to get all their fixed line and TV service from a single company.

Delivering the content over its own network, rather than from the public Internet, may help TalkTalk to guarantee a better user experience to its end users, as well as reduce its peering costs for internet connectivity.

“Our aim is to work with TalkTalk to develop an intelligent network architecture that can handle the extra demand efficiently while at the same time, creating the potential for new revenues by exposing the assets within the network in a secure way,” said Paul Larbey, vice president of Velocix, a wholly owned subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert), in a statement.

TalkTalk has been planning to launch a TV service for the past couple of years. It had come close to launch the service last year when it acquired Tiscali (News - Alert) U.K., but Tiscali’s IPTV platform did not prove to be sufficient to launch such a service.