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I know someone who worked for Kingston Communications when they rolled out their TV on demand service in Hull back in the mid-90s. The STBs had a 4Mb IP feed to them, but only 256k - 2Mb could be accessed by the customer depending on how much they paid. Kcom staff had access to the whole 4Mb. I would guess that that is the model that most providers will take. Time to dust off the CV...

One of the nearby cities, Kingston upon Hull (or just Hull as it's generally known) has had IPTV for some years. The hardware uses an ARM processor and the set top box version of RISC OS.

Interesting you can thank the privatisation of the telephone system for this development. The telephone system here in the UK used to be run and managed by the Post Office. Then when it was sold off the whole lot was bought by British Telecom (now BT) except for the network around Hull which was bought by the local Council (local government). Eventually the was privatised and became Kingston Communications who were for a while, the only phone company that wasn't BT. So the government restrictions on BT supplying television didn't apply and Kingston set up their own digital television service.

Actually, according to France Telecom, DSL was invented in BellCore Labs in 1987. :)

Telcos in France, Germany, Britain and Belgium have been quicker off the mark than the USA in developing and rolling out "triple-play" services over DSL though.

This has been available from Kingston Communication for at least the last three years. More info here. Prices start at £6.80 per month.

However, I believe that this is only available to customers in Hull, UK because KC own all of the infrastructure there.

I'm a student in Hull, England, UK. Hull has its own telephone company, Kingston Communications. It used to be owned by the city council but is now half privatised.

The problem is - it has a total monopoly, that is unlike BT it has no competition. However its DSL service is very good but I'm paying £35 per month for it, though I share this with my housemates. So its a pricey but quality service.

I would like to see some competition here from the likes of BT, NTL and others. However OFTEL or OFCOM or whatever they're called now have banned any competition because Kingston Communications are too small and would be crushed by the competition! I say let it be, if they get crushed then thats market forces at work.

I'm a student in Hull, England, UK. Hull has its own telephone company, Kingston Communications. It used to be owned by the city council but is now half privatised.

The problem is - it has a total monopoly, that is unlike BT it has no competition. However its DSL service is very good but I'm paying £35 per month for it, though I share this with my housemates. So its a pricey but quality service.

I would like to see some competition here from the likes of BT, NTL and others. However OFTEL or OFCOM or whatever they're called now have banned any competition because Kingston Communications are too small and would be crushed by the competition! I say let it be, if they get crushed then thats market forces at work.

O.K. How about these:

BT "Sometimes"
BT rewrites T&Cs to kick off users
BT degradates service for heavy users

When I used BTInternet as an ISP, the service was appalling - random disconnections, loss of DNS, loss of routing, disgraceful customer support.
Yes, I know that BTInternet (now BTOpenworld) is meant to be separate from BT itself - which BTi loved to point out when things went wrong (often) and came back with the ever-original "Oh, we can't do anything - we have to wait for BT to do x." - but since BTi use the BT brand name as an advertising leverage I have no respect for either.

Mind you: I'm also biased as I come from Hull where they have a real telecoms operator...

This service (I'm the Software Architect), have launched the worlds largest Video on Demand over IP.

We have been doing this for two year now, I keep submitted links, each time we have a development, but slashdot have never seen fit to publish.

Some links:

"Kingston Interactive TV

Financial Times

Kingston Communications

Video Server Case Study

BBC joing broadband television platform

This case study reveals more details about the platform.

In Kingston upon Hull, Kingston provide a 256Kbps ADSL service for £11 (~$17) through it's KIT service.