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BBC claims duty to push digital innovation
The BBC is fending off criticisms of digital initiatives such as its web TV platform YouView by claiming digital innovation is part of its licence fee remit. Speaking at the FT World Telecoms Conference in London, BBC future media and technology director Erik Huggers said the BBC has always worked with industry to deploy new platforms. He also backed new open technologies such as HTML5, warning that device fragmentation threatens to slow down innovation.
During his keynote speech, Huggers noted that one of six public purposes laid out in the BBC’s charter is to "bring to the nation the benefits of emerging communication technologies and services". He cites Freeview, DAB radio, Teletext and red button services as past technological developments, and says the BBC will continue on this path with the roll-out of YouView and an international version of the iPlayer next year.
Huggers says YouView, formerly known as Project Canvas, will create a single open platform that will allow for innovation in the living room. However, he says mobile divergence poses long-term development problems: "In this crazy world, where every manufacturer has their own proprietary operating system … we ended up having to port the same service over and over again. That is not sustainable," says Huggers.
"Long-term, we think the solution is HTML5,” he adds. "We believe that with the right sort of focus, with the right investment, HTML5 as a technology can mature into a solution that allows very rich services and applications to be developed and to be available right across mobile devices, living room devices, a whole gamut [of devices]."
The executive is calling for open standards, a competitive marketplace and a neutral internet to allow an "equal and level playing field for all". He also warns that the government should be "very, very careful about" ushering in a two-tier web. These comments come after culture minister Ed Vaizey, delivering a speech at the same event, failed to detail the extent to which traffic should be managed on the internet or say whether ISPs should ever have the right to favour or restrict particular content, such as iPlayer services, for commercial reasons.
Huggers claims 9.2m people in the UK have never been online, and says 60% of this group are over the age of 65. He says it is part of the BBC's responsibility to get the whole of the country connected so that everyone can "reap the benefits of the web". He also points to the BBC's planned digital broadcast of every event during the 2012 Olympics as a "stepping stone" into a digital, connected Britain.
