European Net surfers pay hefty per-minute telephone charges. Testing investors' patience. Still, the rollout of interactive TV is testing the patience of investors. That's why the losses are piling up. Our payback for each subscriber's set-top box is less than a year,'' claims BSkyB CEO Ball.
Ball is happy to give away the boxes.
The British station's subscriber pool is rising faster than analysts expected, doubling last year from 2.5 million to almost 5 million. Investors seem to believe the huge investment in interactive TV will pay off one day. In I-TV, scale matters. DirecTV Inc. In a recent interview, Murdoch said he might postpone the IPO and roll in all his digital assets under Directv. BSkyB's Ball won't comment.