World Cup of woe

The 2006 World Cup will be the first to get featured live on the Internet but it has come one year too early for most telecoms operators.

The BBC is going to be showing its matches live on the web as well as on TV. But it's not making a huge fuss about advertising the fact. Presumably the Corporation is treading carefully around possible broadcast licence issues.

Among the telcos, BT is not battle-ready yet, despite the new deal for Premier League rights. Deutsche Telekom, host nation operator, is the most glaring no-show for IPTV.

KPN and Belgacom would have been the obvious best candidates as host-nation incumbent telcos. They just finished their first seasons of football IPTV and KPN has just celebrated signing three top Dutch clubs for next season's coverage. But who knows if they would have been happy to have got a Fifa deal? Belgacom needed 410 people to wrap up for the Belgian league. What would be the economics of a global tournament? Maybe they are relieved the last Benelux-hosted (Euro) championships were held back in 2000.