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James said there will come a point when the fixed cost of satellite deployment outweighs the income from customers, but that was still “many years away”.



“There is a good example in Spain where Telefonica – the BT of Spain – had an IPTV service. It merged with Canal Plus’s Spanish satellite TV service in 2015. It brought across all the content and immediately shifted the focus to IPTV. After they merged it was about 37pc satellite. But five years later, satellite still has an 11pc share with around 400,000 customers.”

"Certainly the fault is with Telecom Italia,” says François, who thinks that the streaming snags are solvable in the long run.



“It’s just that [at present] it doesn’t look good, commercial wise marketing wise,” Godard adds, noting that “when you have technology problems, people don’t rush to buy your product.”

As well as presenting quality entertainment, it’s in the BBC’s remit to expose its audience to a broad range of content. “If personalisation or recommendations are making people's access to any content difficult,” says Tom Harrington ”and therefore [limiting their exposure to] new ideas, programmes that are socially important ... the BBC is failing at one of its core jobs.”

Tom said "It is a testament to the rarity of problems with DTT/satellite transmission that this got so much attention – compare that to IP delivery of video, which can still often be somewhat dicey, especially with live events.”

Karen said “You can have two networks in most areas, some can support three, but after that it’s an accident waiting to happen... We don’t think all the current players will survive."

James said Virgin Media O2 is “the main driver” behind the achievement. “People who didn’t have great speeds are now leaping up to gigabit capability."

Claire said a deal baked into an inflationary rise of 2.5pc a year “would be a very good day for the BBC, Richard Sharp and Tim Davie”, adding that it would be a £25bn deal.

She added “I think we are in some kind of suspense. And the simultaneous disappearance of Dowden and media minister John Whittingdale is not a good day for the BBC. Those two were very heavily involved in that negotiation."