Interxion industry comment: Britbox reliable enough to live up to hype?
July 19, 2019
Following the BBC and ITV’s announcement of Britbox’s launch, Interxion – a colocation datacentre company working with streaming services and content providers throughout Europe to deliver reliable connectivity – have offered the following comments, courtesy of Richard Craig-McFeely, Strategy and Marketing Director, Digital Media:
“Today, the BBC and ITV have announced that they intend to join forces to launch BritBox – a brand new subscription service with the ambition of taking on content streaming heavyweight Netflix. If anything, the launch of BritBox demonstrates the strength of the power of consumer habits, which are driving appetite for streaming video content on demand. Previously, this has mainly been the domain of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, but now traditional broadcasters are jumping on the bandwagon in a struggle to claw back eyeballs and mindshare. Let’s not forget all of these players will soon have Disney+ and Apple TV+ to compete with too.”
“BBC Director General Tony Hall claims “These are exciting times for people who love quality TV.” But what is quality content if it just doesn’t work? The success of BritBox will of course depend on the calibre and originality of content on offer, but the service will also need to provide a slick, intuitive video platform, and all of the connectivity and infrastructure required to provide a satisfactory user experience. With so much choice – perhaps too much – on the market today, consumers aren’t going to stand for a service that takes an age to load, or has poor audio and picture quality, even if it’s potentially a cheaper alternative to Netflix. I’m looking forward to seeing how BritBox can compete with established players who have already made crafty infrastructure decisions, and whether it’s able to live up to the hype.”