July 19, 2004

The BBC is investigating the possibility of launching its own low-cost PC terminal, bundled with cheap broadband internet access.

In an interview with the Guardian, the corporation’s new media director, Ashley Highfield, said that he is committed to using the BBC to overcome the country’s digital divide, and a BBC low-cost broadband service would advance this, similar to the success of the BBC’s DTT project, Freeview.

The offering is still in the planning stages. “A few people have come together to see if we could put a low-end connected PC into the market. Could we do it? I don't know, but we would have to be clear about why," Mr Highfield told the UK newspaper.

Mr Highfield also outlined plans to launch a BBC standalone search engine that would compete with Google and others.

While the recent government review of the BBC’s online activities suggested the broadcaster had perhaps extended beyond its public service remit and was undermining private sector online services in the UK, the chair of the report, Philip Graf, did say that the BBC’s existing search services were to be welcomed, as search technology is currently dominated by American firms and thus there was value in spending public money on a UK-oriented web search service.

Nonetheless, the moves will most likely anger private sector internet players in the UK, many of whom are opposed to the BBC’s online activities to begin with and want a curtailment of them, not an expansion.

Source: DM Europe.com

Read Serge Thibodeau's daily blogs on search engines at Serge Thibodeau Live. We strongly suggest you bookmark our web site by clicking here.

Get your business or company listed in the Global Business Listing directory and increase your business. It takes less then 24 hours to get a premium listing in the most powerful business search engine there is. Click here to find out all about it.

Rank for $ales strongly recommends the use of WordTracker to effectively identify all your right industry keywords. Accurate identification of the right keywords and key phrases used in your industry is the first basic step in any serious search engine optimization program. Click here to start your keyword and key phrase research.

You can link to the Rank for Sales web site as much as you like. Read our section on how your company can participate in our reciprocal link exchange program and increase your rankings in all the major search engines such as Google, AltaVista, Yahoo and all the others.