Dan Rayburn writes on his Business of Video blog on StreamingMedia.com :

Considering how many telcos and carriers have recently entered the market it should come as no surprise that BT plans to offer a content delivery service of their own by the end of this year. It’s been widely known that for some time now, BT has been looking at the CDN landscape evaluating how best to enter the market and it appears they have decided on a strategy.

Based on an interview they did this week with Informa Telecoms & Media, BT said that, “We believe that we can build our own CDN as effectively as reselling others solutions.” While this built it yourself approach by BT does not surprise me, unless BT only wants to have a regional CDN footprint, I think it’s the wrong approach. It is possible that BT may just focus on building out a European based CDN which would be a lot easier for them than trying to deploy a CDN with a global footprint. But if they want to service content owners who need delivery to all regions of the world, BT is going to have a really hard time playing catch up in the market. You can’t just throw a bunch of money at the problem. It takes a lot more than deploying lots of boxes to have a real CDN offering in the marketplace.

If BT only focuses on Europe, or even just the UK to start, they could have an offering out sometime this year that could be fairly well received. BT has a deep customer base to sell to and already has loads of infrastructure in place in the UK. If BT starts out small and stays regional, they could see some success with their offering beginning next year. But if they want to become a global content delivery network and think they can have something out in the market by the end of this year, that’s just not realistic.

In anticipation of its CONNECTIONS Europe Summit on March 31, research firm Parks Associates announced findings that 28% of households in Western Europe watch TV shows online at least once a month, and many of them watch considerably more often. But even if we take that once-a-month figure, that’s a pretty impressive number — nearly a third of all households are getting at least some television content online rather than or in addition to broadcast and satellite delivery. With internet-connected televisions on the horizon and broadband penetration still growing, that number is only likely to grow by the time Streaming Media Europe rolls around in October. And, with the global economy still in trouble, online delivery of video is looking more and more attractive to content owners; in fact, I’ll go so far as to predict that the economic crisis will actually be good, in the long run, for online video. 

We’ll be announcing our call for speakers for this year’s conference next month, so now’s the time to start thinking about what you’d like to see for topics at Streaming Media Europe 2009.

One of the biggest roadblocks to wider adoption of Microsoft Silverlight is that so many video and interactive ads are created in Flash. Contentinople is reporting that Panache has released technology that lets publishers serve Flash ads in Silverlight video streams. Check out the full post here. Microsoft believes this should make Silverlight more appealing, and they’re right.

The UK Competitions Commission effectively blocked the Kangaroo VOD service from launching with its final report, released today, in which chairman Peter Freeman said the service “would be too much of a threat to competition in this developing market and has to be stopped.” It’s a blow to BBC Worldwide, ITV, and Channel 4, and unsurprisingly, the partners are calling it a “missed opportunity in the development of British broadcasting.” As much as I’m in favor of unfettered competition, I have to say I think the commission blew this one. PaidContent:UK has some great analysis of the decision here.

The UEFA Cup Round of 32 is just about to begin, and Streaming Media magazine needs you to help us kick off our own contest, the inaugural Streaming Media Dream Team. We’re looking for you to nominate the top players in the online video game, whether they’re setting new standards for media and entertainment, innovating in the corporate or government sector, or offering new technologies and products that help end users play at the top of their game.

The first step in the process is for readers to submit their nominations. From the list of nominees, the Streaming Media magazine editors will narrow it down to the final Dream Team, which we’ll announce in the April/May 2009 issue of the magazine. If you want to nominate someone, please fill out the form here. Nominations must be submitted no later than February 17. Contact editor Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen at erics@streamingmedia.com with any questions.