After spending years in the Teletext doldrums, interactive TV is suddenly a hot sector. Telecommunications companies figure they can add high-margin broadband services to their threatened voice revenues, and companies from every IT sector are rushing to provide them with the infrastructure they need. To pick just one example, Digital Island Inc wants to offer its streaming media network services globally. To that end, it has formed a partnership with French provider VIEWonTV, which develops interactive television channels for multinational corporations. By reselling Digital Island’s content delivery, application hosting and intelligent network services, VIEWonTV becomes one of sixteen global partners for Digital Island.
Liberate Technologies Inc has scored an even bigger coup with the launch of WebVision, an internet-based, interactive TV service from US West. The telecommunications company is offering TV-based broadcast, telephony and internet access services to its ISP customers in Minnesota, effective immediately. It plans an aggressive rollout to Denver, Phoenix, Seattle, Portland and Salt Lake City from early 2000. The upside for Liberate is that every WebVision set top box contains a copy of its Liberate TV Navigator and Liberate Connect software. Like Digital Island, it rakes in the sales without necessarily exposing itself to the vagaries of the interactive TV market. Even if interactive TV doesn’t take off this time around, the companies supplying the greedily hopeful telcos are onto a good thing.
