Project Canvas, driving broadband forward

Project Canvas is the working title for a project to provide a full television service and more via the internet. Whilst each television channel presently offers some form of “watch again” and live streaming, project canvass aims to offer a unified service with live television, video-on-demand, and internet connectivity. So, for example, you may watch a news bulletin and by clicking on a button, be able to access further information about the country or person involved.

The canvas main partners are the BBC, BT, ITV, Channel 4, TalkTalk and Arqiva. Channel 5 was involved but pulled out on the 9 July 2010 pending a review of its digital platform strategy.

The main downside of project canvas is that it relies on fast broadband to deliver. With reliable broadband access being patchy throughout the UK, the potential audience for project canvas may be restricted. The ambition for project canvas to take freeview to the next level may therefore be some way off. However, there will be considerable pressure for the project to be a success and with BT being involved we could see a rapid increase in the provision of reliable broadband lines to avoid loss of clients to satellite broadband.

With this potential improvement in broadband access comes the ability to take advantage of cheap phone calls via the internet. Services such as VoIP rely on good broadband connections. Businesses can then benefit from SaaS (software as a service) services such as virtual switchboards. These operate in the same way as a manual switchboard but because they operate via the internet they are a fraction of the cost.

Businesses using virtual switchboards can take advantage of the normal switchboard services such as call divert, call queuing, messages and interactive selections. You also get some great extras such as answerphone messages bring stored electronically and accessed via the web or forwarded by e-mail. You can also programme your virtual switchboards to switch automatically to answerphone or to another office at set times. All this for a fraction of the cost of buying a manual switchboard.

Anything which helps drive forward fast reliable broadband will therefore help businesses to save costs and become more efficient. If project canvas manages this then we are in favour and with youtube also being involved in the project, our free television viewing choices may also become more interesting next year.