BIB (British Interactive Broadcasting), or Open as it now likes to be known, will be offering via Sky Digital some 'interactive' services such as home banking and shopping from the Spring of 1999. In order for this to work at all your digibox must be connected to a telephone to allow you to 'interact' with the service that you are interested in. To be sure of having a reasonable number of potential users of this service BIB decided to subsidise the purchase cost of the digibox to the tune of £167 as long as you agree to the digibox being connected to your phone for 12 months.

To help you stick to your part of the bargain BIB require that your digibox be fitted by a specially authorised installer. This install is free if you take out a Digital Sky subscription but is a very overpriced £99.99 if you don't. A clever technique to encourage more people to subscribe to DigiSky. After installation Sky (on BIBs behalf) will periodically get your digibox to dial out to a number that is currently free to check that the box is still connected to the phone. In addition the digital contract states that if your digibox is connected to the phone then Sky may use it to transmit "information" back to them. This information is to do with Pay Per View (PPV) programming and possibly other things.

The important thing to remember is that the phone connection is entirely optional as long as you don't take the BIB subsidy. If you take the BIB subsidy the connection is obligatory for one year. No part of the current Sky TV service (PPV, Movie Channels, Box Office etc.) is not available to those who don't wish to have the phone connection to the digibox. Everyone can receive all channels and all programmes without a phone connection by using a regular telephone to order these PPV programmes in the usual way. If you do not wish to order extra PPV programmes then you do not need to have a telephone at all to receive the Sky service.