Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt may well be receiving lavish offers and gifts from anyone in the British horse racing levy dispute, however, he continues his every day job as if nothing’s going on. Today’s announcement will have lifted the mood in certain communities around the country. Hunt has announced that the whole of the country will have super-fast broadband by 2014, including parts of the country that have never experienced above 56k before – some probably haven’t even heard of the Internet. Before you ask, that’s not us trying to take the piss either.
The UK will have the “best broadband in the UK” by 2014 and be the envy of the rest of Europe something that won’t have gone un-noticed by the gaming companies that are battling it out for supremacy in the UK market. Hunt used the announcement to say that he hopes that we may reach the level of South Korea in future. Although some of the funding will come from the BBC license fee, companies already offering high-speed broadband, such as BT and Virgin Media, will be asked to foot part of the bill.
Virgin Media have been busy themselves, with the launch of a TiVo set-top box for their customers. TiVo did have an earlier partnership with Sky at the beginning of the last decade that never took off, and Virgin Media will hope to tap into Sky’s market share. So TiVo isn’t completely new, but the plethora of features may put your grandparents into a state of shock when you tell them it’s how you watch TV.
With the grandparents sleeping it off, it will give you a chance to explore what it has to offer. In addition to the 1TB of space to record programs (roughly three weeks) the most exciting part will be the fact that they have an internet connection and an App store where it will possible to connect to social networks and who knows what else.
This is sure to trigger a reaction amongst the gaming industry as a number, such as Paddy Power, have released Apps for the smart phone/tablet market in the past year or so.
Betfair are one company that have been aggressively developing new software, and partnerships in place with the likes of Yahoo!, Sony, and Samsung they’re already well placed in the betting-on-TV market.
Head of Betfair TV, Simon Miller, explained: “We expect increasing Broadband speeds and the growing penetration of internet-enabled TV devices to see more sports fans using their TV remotes to place their bets. Our TV sports betting application is already carried by major manufacturers as well as Yahoo!, and we’re monitoring developments in this area closely.
“We strive to develop innovative applications for our customers, who increasingly want to enjoy the Betfair experience across a range of platforms – internet enabled-TV’s being one of them.”
CalvinAyre.com contacted a number of other companies but at the article was published none of them had got back to us. If Betfair are anything to go by though, this part of the market is likely to be one that grows and grows. In future it may even be possible to bet live on who will be getting killed off in Corrie’s 100th birthday episode, Bodog’s odds on screen.
