BT's video on demand trials

The first major differentiating service on the information superhighway may well be video on demand (VOD), a term that often includes not only movies and past TV programmes but also transactional services such as shopping, banking, education, training and games, all fully on-demand and all initially aimed squarely at the mass residential market, delivered over telecommunications networks. During 1994, BT ran a technology trial of VOD in Suffolk, UK, for 60 employee customers and is now moving towards launching a market trial of various interactive multimedia services for perhaps 2500 paying customers. The paper looks at the major aspects of BTs implementations of VOD.