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Orange UK stocks up for IPTV launch Orange UK has forged its first video-on-demand content partnership for digital TV and PC rights to fuel its upcoming digital TV service, which it said today would launch "later this year." The mobile operator has teamed up with Disney-ABC International Television to allow subscribers to watch a selection of Disney, Touchstone and Miramax movies via its planned on-demand service, Orange TV. Films to be initially available via the service will be Jerry Bruckheimer's thriller Déjà Vu, starring Denzel Washington; the John Travolta and Tim Allen comedy Wild Hogs; and Venus, starring Peter O'Toole. Tim Pearson, director of IPTV at Orange, said the deal was the first of many content partnerships he will be signing in the coming months. "We're gearing up for our launch of digital TV later this year. We intend to offer our customers a great range of the best movies on demand, for which this agreement with Disney is a great step." "We're committed to developing a digital TV service that will allow our customers to get more from their TV by putting them in control of the best quality entertainment with the flexibility to watch what they want, when they want, how they want." The market for the UK service is not only Orange's existing 16.5 million customers in the UK - unevenly split between 15.1 million mobile and 1.5 million internet customers - but the growing IPTV user base in that market. A recent Screen Digest report said the UK had the fastest rate of IPTV growth in Europe, adding that the number of UK IPTV households would rise from 80,000 to 300,000 by year end. There were 2.9 million IPTV subscribers in Europe in 2006, a figure that's set to double to 5.6 million this year. Orange's upcoming launch of digital TV in the UK builds upon its existing TV services in France, Spain, Mauritius, Senegal and Poland, and comes as UK telco BT today said the roll-out of IPTV service BT Vision was "going according to plan," and Tiscali said its own service would launch in September. C21 first reported France Telecom-owned Orange's plans to launch TV services into the UK here in April 2006, but the company then said Orange TV would launch by the end of last year. Ed Waller 26 Jul 2007 © C21 Media 2007 
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