Whilst the Trust concludes that we are complying with our minimum 25% quota and ensuring that the content commissioned is of a suitable range and diversity, we acknowledge the call for significant and urgent improvements to the way in which we engage with the market, and a redefinition of the long-term strategic goals of the quota system.

On an operational level we've already taken remedial measures. A business review identified a number of shortcomings in the way we work with suppliers. We have recently run a pilot of operational changes to redress these, as outlined in a previous post from October. The focus for improvement is three-fold: the suitability and practicality of our current quota definitions, the overall openness and transparency with the market, and the simplicity and efficiency of our commissioning processes. We look forward to actively engaging with the market so we can better shape and develop our proposals. This will also provide an opportunity for us to communicate in more detail the implications of the new BBC Online strategy - announced earlier this week - for external suppliers.

It is critical that any changes which are proposed reflect the extent to which the online market has changed since publication of the Graf Report in 2004. The speed and magnitude of change in the online industry has been highlighted by the Trust. It's clear that any improvements we make must recognise these shifts in order to be effective, set us up for success and give us a robust framework for the future. For this to be a success, we must ensure that all proposed reforms meet our objectives to make our engagement with suppliers more strategic, open, and effective.

We will submit our detailed response on both improvements to process and the broader strategic goals of our quota to the Trust within three months.

Erik Huggers is Director, BBC Future Media & Technology

BBC's Six Public Purposes

Today I want to tell you about what the BBC is doing to help build a 'connected' Britain. The BBC's sixth public purpose is to deliver to the public the benefits of emerging communications technologies and services. Pioneering technologies and platform innovation is enshrined in the BBC's Charter. Our Research & Development department has been instrumental in the development of digital television, DVBT-2, HD, DAB Radio and much more. I'm proud of the great content and services that the BBC produces and delivers, and our mission to help get people online. But there are problems that we need to overcome in order to realise the potential of a fully-connected Britain; the state of networks (a lack of investment and demand driving that investment), and device fragmentation (a lack of common standards). We all must work together to confront these challenges and to protect the open, neutral internet.

The 2012 Digital Opportunity

London 2012 provides a huge digital opportunity. The BBC holds digital media rights for the Olympics and is committed to collaborating with internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile networks to ensure the Olympics are the most inclusive and connected yet. What's more, Digital Switchover will be complete by the advent of the games so everybody should be able to follow, participate in, and contribute to one of the greatest national celebrations in living memory. However, there are challenges to overcome on the route to a fully-connected Olympics.

Building better, and better used networks

While substantial private investment is needed to roll-out out networks that are faster, and more widely available, public investment will make an important contribution. From 2013, there will be a ring-fence in the licence fee of £150 million for broadband, consistent with the BBC's public purpose to promote the benefits of emerging technologies. The roll-out of superfast broadband is a Government priority. It could help to tackle the UK's 'notspots' where there is currently no internet access and would encourage organisations like the BBC to develop the services of tomorrow. We believe that new content and services which are unique to the medium - and awareness of those services - will play an equally important role in driving broad consumer adoption.

Helping People Get Online

Building a connected Britain will mean breaking down barriers to involvement. There are 7 million unconnected homes in the UK and 9.2 million people have never been online. It means that many people don't yet have access to BBC services like BBC iPlayer, nor to a vast range of other content, such as Government services online. There are a number of reasons for this - these people may be uninterested, but they may also be in need of support and information to help them get started. In common with the population as a whole, they may not have access to superfast networks nor a compelling reason to want to use them.

The BBC is already involved in exciting campaigns promoting the benefits of broadband. Take, for example, the recent BBC First Click campaign which helped people take the first steps to getting connected within the nationwide Get Online Week. We were delighted with the results - we received thousands of calls to the advice line in the first few weeks, and many people booked themselves onto courses to take the first steps to getting connected (you can see one of the on-air trails below). It's great to see the industry pulling together to give people confidence to get online and I hope we see many more initiatives like this in the near future.

Creating focused Internet Services

By focusing our digital presence we'll be able to offer more compelling online experiences to new and existing users. In March of this year we announced a new strategy - Putting Quality First. Central to this strategy is a proposal to transform BBC Online by doing 'fewer things better'. BBC Online (which receives c.32 million unique users a week and is rated 4th in the UK) started life as a text publishing medium which, as the web matured, continued to grow. To help us rationalise this collection of sites and pages we'll be refining our editorial scope and will focus on five key product portfolios. I have outlined this proposal in more detail elsewhere. Our ambition is to deliver great digital products that drive consumer demand for quality online services. We have a great heritage in doing this. For instance, when BBC iPlayer was launched in 2007 the market for online catch-up TV was negligible, which is hard to imagine based on record results of October when there were 139 million requests for programmes.

Overcoming Fragmentation

Fragmentation and competing technologies threaten to stifle digital innovation and cause higher costs. We live in a crazy world where every manufacturer or software company has their own proprietary system. It's been necessary for us to build more than 40 different variants of BBC iPlayer for different platforms and devices. It would be a great shame if fragmentation of the mobile and TV market stifled the development of online services for UK audiences, so I'm pleased that by supporting Youview the BBC can contribute to striking a balance in the market dominated by pay TV options. Open standards are critical to the growth of our creative economy, foster simplicity for the market, and broaden consumer choice.

I've previously talked about HTML5. Let me be clear: the BBC fully supports HTML5 and we will adopt it where appropriate. We are in the process of appointing a Senior Technologist, Internet Standards to work with the W3C and other standards bodies to move this forward because we believe it can help overcome the fragmentation I talked about earlier.

Maintaining an Open, Neutral Internet

Maintaining an open and neutral internet is critical. It's very easy to take the internet for granted but in reality it's transformed the way we communicate and is the lens through which so many of us see the world. So, it's critical that there's continued investment in next-generation networks to cope with the growth of and demand for compelling content and digital services. In the meantime, I'm concerned by recent developments whereby ISPs discriminate in favour of certain traffic based on who provides it. In an era of fierce competition, it's understandable that some network operators might look to gain commercial advantage by charging for content distribution. I've blogged previously about my thoughts on traffic management but plainly, an open and neutral internet is crucial to the growth of our digital economy. Further, there is a need for consumers to know what sort of broadband package they are buying - or switching to - and the level of service they can expect. The market is not yet sufficiently competitive to make switching easy.

To this end, our R&D team are developing a prototype meter to show consumers in real-time how efficiently BBC iPlayer is being delivered by their ISP - with a simple red, amber, green indicator. In addition, we propose to work with the industry to discuss the possibility of a "kitemark" to denote levels of different broadband package capability in simple, easy-to-understand language.

Furthermore, we are ready to engage with ISPs to help reduce network congestion by introducing adaptive bitrate streaming technologies which use the HTTP protocol and can be cached on the ISP networks. We also believe that the industry should embrace and enable multicasting delivery, something we have been championing for many years because it would dramatically reduce congestion for live streaming.

A Track Record in Driving Digital Media Adoption

The BBC can play an important role in driving digital media adoption and working with partners to develop technologies and services that really work and allow fantastic competition. Digital TV has been a huge success. Freeview is found in 18.7 million homes and you can buy a box now for as little as £30. It has brought the benefits of interactivity and paved the way for next-generation IPTV services. It was the open standards which the BBC, in partnership with the industry, helped develop that broadened manufacturing options and hastened adoption of the medium.

I hope that we can bring this experience to bear for broadband.

Erik Huggers is Director of BBC Future Media & Technology

Why do we need Product Management? In March of this year the BBC announced a new strategy - Putting Quality First. I have blogged previously about the significance of this for BBC Online. Putting Quality First recognised the importance of BBC Online within the BBC's overarching strategy, and proposed we focus on doing 'fewer things better'. BBC Online started life as a flat text-publishing medium via which static web pages were delivered, before the web began to mature and the offering grew. To help us to rationalise this, we'll be introducing modern management processes to bring it all together.

Read more and comment at the About The BBC blog

Erik Huggers is Director, BBC Future Media & Technology

The companies which provide our broadband connections occasionally struggle to cope with the amount of traffic on the internet. And as traffic is only going to increase, it's critical that there is continued investment in next generation networks in order to cope with that growth and power a connected, creative economy.

Until that capacity is in place, the BBC recognises that traffic management may sometimes be necessary for technical reasons - for example to cope with legitimate network congestion. But this should be the exception. An emerging trend towards network operators discriminating in favour of certain traffic based on who provides it, as part of commercial arrangements, is a worrying development.

Why? For companies that can pay for prioritisation, their traffic will go in a special fast lane. But for those that don't pay? Or can't pay? By implication, their traffic will be de-prioritised and placed in the slow lane. Discriminating against traffic in this way would distort competition to the detriment of the public and the UK's creative economy.

The founding principle of the internet is that everyone - from individuals to global companies - has equal access. Since the beginning, the internet has been 'neutral', and everyone has been treated the same. But the emergence of fast and slow lanes allows broadband providers to effectively pick and choose what you see first and fastest.

There have already been a couple of incidents where access to BBC iPlayer was seriously restricted at certain times of the day. But this is broader than the BBC safeguarding online access to the public services we provide. Along with many other organisations, we recognise the benefits and endless possibilities that come from everyone being connected - sites like theyworkforyou, Mumsnet, and Audioboo have become highly valued democratic and social tools for so many people, while others like Facebook, youTube and Skype have become essential parts of our everyday lives - all having emerged as a result of the open internet. It's exactly these sorts of services that inspire people to go online in the first place, something which we try to help people with through BBC websites such as /connect and initiatives such as 'First Click' - our recently-launched media literacy campaign.

This innovative and dynamic ecosystem, that enables huge public value, could be put at risk if network operators are allowed to use traffic management to become gatekeepers to the internet.

Some say that traffic management is OK in a competitive broadband market - because people can switch broadband provider if they don't like the service they're receiving. In principle that could be right. But in reality, people don't tend to switch broadband provider because it's too complicated, expensive, confusing and often locked in to other services such as telephone and pay-TV. And even if switching were made easier, much more work is needed to deliver real transparency about the traffic management practices used by different broadband providers.

We've expressed this and other concerns to the industry regulator Ofcom and to the European Commission as part of their consultation on the issue. At this stage new legislation is not needed , since effective new EU rules have already been passed. But we do need the determination of regulators to now fully implement these rules, to prevent the emergence of practices which undermine the open internet which we so often take for granted.

Erik Huggers is Director, BBC Future Media & Technology

Open standards have always been part of the BBC's DNA. They are fundamental to driving market innovation and will always be important to the BBC's mission to introduce the benefits of new technology to society. Open standards have the ability to transform our lives for the better.

Our use of Flash is not a case of BBC favouritism, rather it currently happens to be the most efficient way to deliver a high quality experience to the broadest possible audience. Let's also not forget that we already support a very wide range of other formats and codecs to deliver BBC iPlayer and other services to variety of devices.

The fact is that there's still a lot of work to be done on HTML5 before we can integrate it fully into our products. As things stand I have concerns about HTML5's ability to deliver on the vision of a single open browser standard which goes beyond the whole debate around video playback.

Driving open standards is in our DNA

The BBC has a long history of working with standards bodies; both contributing to development and adopting the standards across systems that support our work. It is a tradition we continue to be very proud of and is even reflected in the BBC's Charter that charges our R&D department to promote open standards in its work. Most recently we helped to ratify a new standard for digital terrestrial broadcasting across Europe (DVB-T2).

HTML5 can deliver so much more than a new way of delivering video playback in a browser. Its aims are rooted in the philosophies of Netscape (the browser as the operating system) and even Larry Ellison's (Network Computer concepts) - you take complexity out of the client and deliver it from the cloud. This speaks to a far greater cause than the delivery of video content. The potential democratising power of cloud computing (to make technology and services easily accessible to anyone on the planet) is a noble cause that we support.

For this reason we are committed to the aims of HTML5. In combination with CSS3 and Javascript it promises a step forward for the web. A truly interoperable experience would materially advance the capabilities we can offer to our audiences, by ushering in a new class of rich interactive experiences on the web. The benefits are not one dimensional. As HTML5 promises to allow us to create new online products with the confidence they will work across the web, the savings in our development and operating costs mean we can spend less on reversioning for different browsers and focus on product development. HTML5 can bring the web together in a way that will better allow us to serve our audiences and business partners.

HTML5 is starting to sail off-course

Not too long ago some browser vendors were showcasing proprietary HTML5 implementations; which in my view threaten to undermine the fundamental promise. Recent activity in the HTML5 Working Group and the apparent split between W3C and WhatWG suggests HTML5 might not be on the path we expect, or deliver what I believe our industry requires. Despite grand overtures from Microsoft toward HTML5 support, their new browser is yet to ship and so the jury is out. The tension between individual motivation and collective consensus has brought an end to many noble causes in the past, and here, the pace of progress appears to be slowing on bringing HTML5 to a ratified state. History suggests that multiple competing proprietary standards lead to a winner-takes-all scenario, with one proprietary standard at the top of the stack, which is not where most of us want to be...

Let's keep HTML5 on track

So my request to the W3C, HTML5 Working Group, and major browser vendors, is to continue fervently on the path you began. Understand you are representing the future of the web, as well as businesses like ours with your efforts. HTML5 is more important than any one motivation. Speed is of the essence. Professional integrity is of the essence. We are counting on you to bring one HTML5 to the web and the W3C to help make this happen.

Drawing an analogy; for all the partners who have worked together it's like building a new house - at this stage there is much work left to do, but we have laid strong foundations and have now been granted planning permission for the final build. As the first bricks are laid, I wanted to reflect on why the partners wanted to build this house in the first place.

Spurred by the BBC Trust to look at ways of working with other public service broadcasters we established a partnership, initially with ITV and BT, to bring internet services to the television set.

It was clear some years ago that internet-connectivity would have a transformative impact on TV, and the BBC's R&D division - responsible for some of the greatest innovations in broadcasting history - had been looking at how the convergence of broadcast and broadband could work in a single device.

Fast forward to 2008. At this time the BBC and other broadcasters were looking at how audiences could access their VOD offerings on a range of devices - but were faced with a huge problem. From a BBC perspective we already saw a hugely fragmented mobile devices market, with different platforms and operating systems, and the emerging connected-TV space was equally fragmented: Virgin Media, Tiscali Homechoice, BT Vision - all very different proprietary platforms. And while we've already brought BBC iPlayer to Freesat, and soon, Freeview - these existing platforms were conceived as digital broadcasting platforms and for varying reasons are unable to evolve into web-connected platforms by themselves as they stand.

So we looked at three distinct areas. First, it's just not cost-effective to build a bespoke on-demand service and web applications for every different device on the market, which means you have to make tough choices about which devices and platforms you build for. Second, you get a very different user-experience across different platforms and devices since not every feature you see on the web will work elsewhere - which makes it an inconsistent and clunky experience for audiences. Thirdly, as stated in the BBC's sixth public purpose, we have a responsibility to 'deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking a leading role in the switchover to digital television.'

Of course it's not just about taking the BBC iPlayer to other platforms - it's all our content - and the approval of Project Canvas won't prevent us syndicating BBC services to new non-canvas platforms and devices, but it is important that choice exists. But for me, there are two main things that will make Canvas distinctive.

First, its focus on simplicity - rooted in the TV experience familiar to everyone in the UK (this was never about putting a search engine on the TV). Technology works best when it's invisible and incredibly simple, useful and fun.

Second, no other platform in the world is working on such open principles with public service at the core. Because the standards are open, the potential audience is huge, and content providers will retain a direct relationship with consumers because the platform has no gatekeepers (editorial or financial). This also means it will become very cost-effective for other services and content providers on the web to build applications for the platform, and Canvas will become a byword for genuine consumer choice.

It was this vision, rooted in public service and developed in a partnership which now comprises ITV, BT, Channel 4, Talk Talk and Arqiva, that has got us to where we are today, and I've been delighted to chair this project throughout its development. As far as the BBC goes, I now need to assess with my team what content and services we make available on the platform and how - but my direct involvement with the team has now finished; and its over to the new Chairman, CEO and Canvas team to realise this vision.

Erik Huggers is Director, BBC Future Media & Technology

This is part of an ongoing process to make BBC Online feel like one coherent service, rather than a disjointed collection of websites, which is greater than the sum of its parts.

Our aim is more than making a website easy on the eye; a good user-experience is essential to making the site easy to use, and most importantly to make it easy to find what you want to look at quickly.

Read more and comment at the About the BBC blog

Erik Huggers is Director, BBC Future Media & Technology

A symptom of our previous, less focussed, approach is the number of top level directories - we have on BBC Online, some 400 (this does not include the many re-directs we set up to make it easy to promote sites in our broadcasts). A number of people have asked us to publish the list and anyone who is interested can access it at the end of the extended entry of this post or as a .txt file here.

I know some have questioned the importance of this number, among them the Guardian newspaper. However, tackling the symptom of a problem does provide a real incentive to change, and in meeting the tld challenge we are reviewing the entire site from top to bottom. As a result, we willl be making some tough decisions about what we want to commit to in future, and what not.

The review will, of course, go beyond top level directories and cover all parts of BBC Online. We'll look at every major section of the site and ask three questions: does it meet our public purposes; does it fit one of the BBC's five editorial priorities; how does it perform in terms of reach, quality, impact and value for money? The Trust is currently consulting on the proposed strategy for the BBC, which includes proposals about how BBC Online should develop in the future. Once the Trust has set the overall strategy for the BBC we will begin to make major changes to BBC Online in line with this.

Then there is the question of what to do with sites to which we no longer wish to commit resources. For some time now we have been mothballing older sites like bbc.co.uk/testthenation so that users understand that we are not keeping them up to date. That is fine for now, but the user experience on these sites will inevitably degrade over time, especially as we upgrade the infrastructure which powers BBC Online - due over the course of the next year. So for sites that we don't want to modernise or simply delete, there is a question about the best way to archive them for future generations and we are looking at the options now. If anyone has a solution to this, we'd be pleased to hear from them.

Erik Huggers is Director, BBC Future Media & Technology.

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• Halve the number of top-level domains
• Reduce spend against the service licence by 25%
• Act as a window on the web - doubling the traffic we send to others
• Focus content on five editorial priorities

FM&T: What we do

The first is Future Media. This department builds products such as the BBC iPlayer, TV and mobile applications, and the interactive Red Button TV services. Fundamentally it looks at the needs of the audience, and builds digital products to deliver our content to them in innovative ways.

The second is the Broadcast and Enterprise Technology Group; responsible for keeping us on-air 24-7, and building the end to end technology infrastructure for our new premises in Broadcasting House and Salford. They also support the IT requirements of our 23,000 staff.

Third is R&D. With sixty years of engineering heritage, this division has produced innovations that have become commonplace in the home: colour television, teletext, NICAM stereo, and Freeview HD.

Finally, Information and Archives: otherwise known as the BBC Archive. In the archive lies some of the greatest moments in British broadcasting history.

All of these departments combine to make the BBC fit for the digital future.

What the audience wants

The audience is increasingly migrating online. The huge uptake of smartphones, and the next generation of Internet Connected TV devices are bringing powerful computing devices into our everyday lives. Many people now access the internet without even turning on a computer.

By 2014, we expect the internet to come of age. Penetration will be up there with TV and Radio, with the medium establishing itself as a genuine third platform. Already we reach 52% of the online audience with >28 million unique users a week and we expect both the online audience, and our percentage of reach, to grow.

This is a fragmented audience. Generally speaking, older audiences view the internet as a source of information, while younger audiences view the internet more as a source of entertainment - viewing video content, social networking, listening to music. In other words, the internet is TV and radio for young people. Do we expect these younger audiences to abandon the internet when they hit their thirties? Of course not. This is a new generation, empowered by abundant choice, who expect to be able to access whatever content or services they want, whenever they want.

Pointing to a single-service future

From Home Service - one service, one platform, one medium in 1922 - to the arrival of TV and a second platform which spawned more services. Digital technologies ushered in the multi-channel world we inhabit today, and with them a third medium - the internet.

And as the internet comes to the living-room through television sets, it will become more important still - and indeed, one day, may be the only platform and delivery system that the BBC needs to fulfil its public purposes. The internet is not an optional extra then; it is the future for the BBC just as it is for the rest of the broadcasting and communications sectors.

BBC Online: a pan-BBC service

This is both a strength and a weakness. While more representative than any other BBC service of the breadth of the BBC's output, as the content created originates from a wide range of BBC divisions this partly explains why it resembles a collection of websites rather than a single service greater than the sum of its parts.

The digital audience has more choice, less time, and a greater expectation that they can get what they want, wherever they want - so we have to work harder to make it easier for them to discover our content. In addition to editorial and scheduling, search, navigation, social discovery and recommendation will help the audience to find what they want.
This move to an internet-connected world requires changes in the way we create content, and the way in which we deliver it. Never before has a service required such a strong partnership between editorial and technology: content and products.

Online products must be useful, simple, up to date and timely. And editorially, we will focus on five core priorities. It is through this lens we will prioritise investment in new content, as well as decide what of our existing online content will stay, go, or be reorganised. These priorities will also influence our archive strategy.

From 400 websites to 200 - and one coherent service

The BBC's online strategy has, for many years, been to play a supporting role to our broadcast output. Programme first, website later. This is not the best way to deliver our public purposes in a digital age. We are moving away from the disparate approach of the past, and to create a single coherent BBC Online which is greater than the sum of its parts. We will look at each component part of the service through three lenses; first, the degree to which it delivers our public purposes; second, the degree to which it fits our editorial priorities; and third, like any other BBC service, how it scores in terms of reach, quality, impact and value.

Our three screen world

It is a service that has evolved with technology. Our first web-based service launched in 1994, was solely accessed via computers. The evolution of web-enabled phones allowed us to repurpose BBC Online content for access on internet-connected mobile phones in 2000, and the next generation of internet-connected TV devices emerging today will signal the next wave of innovation.

The portable device - mobile applications

BBC Online has had a presence on the mobile web for some time now, but at Mobile World Congress earlier this month, I announced plans to create new mobile applications for smartphones. These applications repurpose existing BBC Online content, optimised for immediacy and simple access on the move.

We start with a news application on the iPhone in April, followed by a sport application in time for the World Cup. We will introduce these applications to a range of devices throughout the year; repurposing our core BBC Online propositions.

The shared screen - TV applications

But with no common standards, we've seen a fragmented market emerge, with the TV manufacturers, set-top box manufacturers, gaming consoles, linear TV platforms, and new market entrants all looking to create a foothold in the connected-TV market.

We don't yet know how this is going to play out. It could be that, as Apple did in mobile and digital music, one company creates an end-to-end user experience and creates a de-facto market standard that the consumer and content providers will follow. Or, an open platform like Canvas can create an ecosystem that allows the wider market to set its own terms, free from third-party gatekeepers.

To date, we've focussed on bringing video-on-demand to the living room. We've enabled BBC iPlayer for the Virgin Media TV platform, and the Nintendo Wii and Playstation 3 gaming platforms. All Freesat HD boxes can now access the BBC iPlayer also. Both Samsung and Sony connected TVs will support BBC iPlayer applications and we continue to take an open approach to working with new partners.

But this is about more than the BBC iPlayer - itself a subset of BBC Online. Canvas is an open platform which will deliver rich multi-media content from right across the internet, including BBC Online.

Consistent user experience

With this in mind, we have created a new design template for the site. This new user experience, created by the Future Media team in conjunction with creative direction from designer Neville Brody, will be integrated across the service in 2010-2011. It's a clean new design that introduces consistency of style, usability and accessibility.

The future

BBC Online is linear and on-demand, social and personal. The internet's dynamism and interactivity allows us to weave BBC content into the wider web, making our content part of the social web through discovery and recommendation.

BBC Online can work across multiple devices seamlessly, making existing content available in the most convenient way for audiences. Finish the programme you started watching last night on the TV, resume on your Blackberry on the bus to work. Check your favourites at your desk at lunch-time and catch up on the comedy you missed last week. Download a podcast and listen to it on the way home. All this becomes possible with a seamless service that's available whenever you want it, through whichever device. BBC Online will make the BBC relevant to every single person in the UK, and leave plenty of room for others in the process.

Erik Huggers is Director, BBC Future Media & Technology.

Today I gave a keynote address at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This event brings together the mobile industry, and I shared our plans to make BBC Online even more accessible on mobiles, and what the industry can do collectively to further open up the huge potential of mobile for the benefit of the audience. I've given an outline of my presentation below, and would be keen to hear any feedback.

The BBC's R&D division has been at the heart of the global broadcast engineering industry for more than sixty years. From the Home Service, one service on one platform, to the multiple services on multiple platforms we run today, we've both innovated in technology to enable us to deliver public services free at the point of use, and innovated in content creation accordingly.

Evolution takes time. Early TV programmes were essentially visual recordings of radio programmes, but programme makers grew to understand the medium and TV took its rightful place alongside radio as a second platform.

We are at a similar turning point in the internet age. We still, in the most part, define our digital agenda through the lens of broadcast output, and rightly so. But times are changing, and the internet is taking its place alongside TV and radio as a third platform in its own right.

BBC Online has evolved throughout its 12 year history. The service licence allows us offer mobile access to BBC Online, bringing increased public value to audiences. Ten years ago, we launched BBC Online's first WAP site. Later, we added graphics and after that audio/ video. This has helped BBC Online to establish itself as the second most-visited mobile website in the UK.

Usage grew fast in mid-2008, as this graph shows - driven by the uptake in smartphones, and developments to user-experience. We expect growth to continue.

Major events create usage spikes. The UK's heavy snowfall in early 2009 and the shock death of Michael Jackson promoted spikes in traffic across all our digital platforms - but particularly mobile. With 2.5 million users on the day of Michael Jackson's death, this was more than twice the previous record level of traffic. Traffic peaks too on Saturday afternoons, as people looking up sports results - particularly football.

Of course, it's the immediacy and accessibility of mobile that delivers real value to our audience.

The geographical distribution is interesting too. Usage, by location for BBC Online on the web (on the left), and BBC Online on the mobile (on the right) differs most strongly because of the popularity of our services in Africa, with Nigeria accounting for 5% of all usage. African countries often have higher internet access via mobile than on fixed lines.

With more languages than any other service, BBC World Service has made good use of mobile.

This slide shows a BBC World Service project in Northern Nigeria. Six villages were given mobile phones, to access our Hausa service. The man in the middle is the village's "mobile keeper" - giving them a window on the world and the ability to report on community life.

I find this mix of social, interactive and location-based services incredibly compelling - and a strong sign of how content you'd receive on your computer - or the TV for that matter - can be reversioned for mobiles and add real value to people's lives in the process.

So back to the UK, who accesses our services over mobiles? Long term, mobile could become the primary point of internet access for the majority. The potential is stronger for the younger digital natives of today who become the licence payers of tomorrow.

But today's mobile audience primarily falls into four groups. "Mobile first" - people who use mobile as their primary access point to the internet. "Mobile lifestyle" - those who love the convenience of mobile services when they're on the move. "Addicted devotees" - the gadget lovers on their phones all the time, even in the internet connected home, and "social animals" - people particularly driven by social networking.

It's with these people in mind we focus on today's mobile propositions.

This year, we intend to move mobile forward by repurposing our core, distinctive BBC Online services for a range of mobiles and smartphones over coming months.

BBC News and BBC Sport applications are already planned, starting with BBC News on the iPhone in April.

The BBC Sport application will follow shortly after, in time for the 2010 World Cup, again across a wide range of platforms and devices. (Ed's note: Read about the Sport app on the 5live blog (PM))

I gave a short demonstration of how we expect the News and Sport applications to work - each is designed specifically to focus on what the audience most wants from the mobile device, taking the BBC's audio-visual content to audiences on the move.

My colleagues Pete Clifton in BBC News and David Madden from the BBC Mobile team go into more details on the product features on the News Editors blog and BBC Internet blog. There's also a flash demo of the BBC News application within David's blog.

These applications of course will complement our existing presence on web-based platforms. The news and sport applications will initially be made on iPhone and will follow on Blackberry and Android platforms and a range of other devices later in the year: of course the BBC will work with all companies in this market.

A BBC iPlayer application is already available in the Nokia Ovi store, and we are looking at the possibilities around further BBC iPlayer applications, for release later in the year.

But of course, mobile is one part of a bigger picture. With a service like BBC Online, we can deliver rich, interactive content to the web, to mobile and to TVs - with a user-experience tailored to the platform that carries it to the device.

For mobile, read location-based, simple and personalised user experiences. The web, a rich experience that navigates through the breadth of content. And TV, augmenting a passive experience with the power of on-demand services.

By adding social functionality and the seamless integration of your BBC experience across all your devices, we start to imagine what BBC Online can be. But that's the future.

So how do we get there? We have a real opportunity to improve what we offer younger audiences in particular, those traditionally underserved by the BBC but often use mobile devices to access the internet. Today's audiences expect us to go to them, not come to us.

For us, the 2012 Olympics in London will be the most connected, most digital event we've ever been involved in - and the potential is huge. But the industry needs to change if we are to deliver on this potential.

First, we exist in a fragmented market, that's not easy for content providers and developers to operate in and we must embrace common standardisation of platforms, handset features, and performance.

Second, increased usage and higher quality content puts increased pressure on the networks we rely on for delivery to audiences.. Compression solutions won't be enough and investment in mobile networks will continue to be necessary.

I was very pleased to hear news at the start of the week that two of these issues are beginning to be addressed. The announcement that 24 of the world's largest mobile operators have joined forces to launch an open international applications platform is a great move toward standardisation. In addition AT&T CTO John Donovan's interview with Mobile World Congress Daily suggests that they are taking steps to upgrade their networks to reduce congestion and ease data traffic which is also an excellent step forward.

And finally, network operators and content providers need to overcome location problems. If a network reports a UK customer as being in Canada or Germany, because that's where the traffic is routed, we can't the deliver that content to the consumer - no good for either of us.

I don't pretend these problems are easy to fix, or look to any one sector of this industry to solve them. But I do believe the opportunity is there, and by working in partnership we can go a long way toward unlocking mobile's vast potential - and I hope that this is the first step on this journey.

Erik Huggers is Director, BBC Future Media & Technology.

Channel 4 and Talk Talk now join the BBC, ITV, BT and Five as partners in the project, and together, we are seeking expressions of interest from other companies who share our vision of bringing broadband and broadcast content together through an open, internet-connected TV platform, and increase consumers' access to on-demand content and services.

Of course the BBC's involvement in the project is subject to BBC Trust approval, and we are expecting an interim decision in the near future. If the proposals are approved, then we can move ahead with the other partners to form a new joint venture to develop technical specifications, market a new consumer brand, build a common user experience, and build the technology platform. The project has its own home too, so visit http://projectcanvas.info to keep up to date with developments.

Erik Huggers is Director, BBC Future Media & Technology.

It should be no surprise that digital media are at the heart of the BBC's online strategy.

Audio/visual is the soul of the corporation and will form the backbone of a vastly improved bbc.co.uk in the years to come. It's sometimes easy to forget that we have made substantial progress over the last 12 months from a technical and editorial perspective.

The broad adoption of our embedded media player for on-demand short-form, long-form and simulcasting are great examples. Our podcast offering is growing in popularity fast and BBC iPlayer continues to go from strength to strength.

What I am most proud about is the wide variety of internet-connected devices that BBC iPlayer services can accessed on. I am sure you have seen the list somewhere, so I will go straight to what is new.

Today, we are announcing that in partnership with Adobe we are building a platform-neutral download client.

Using Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), we intend to make BBC iPlayer download functionality available on Mac, Linux and Windows for the first time later this year. Whatever platform you use, you'll now be able to download TV programmes from the BBC to watch later - on the train, in the garden, or wherever you like.

Given our obligations to rights-holders and the BBC Trust, these programmes are protected with DRM, but in a way that shouldn't affect your enjoyment of our programmes, whatever platform you've chosen.

We are also announcing that in partnership with Coremedia, Intertrust and CMLA, we have already enabled over-the-air iPlayer download functionality for the Nokia N96 mobile phone.

For the BBC, this is a first and yet again shows our continued commitment to give our audiences convenient access to our programmes wherever they are. As other advanced mobile phones become available, we will be looking at making the service available there as well.

While we are making great progress, I wonder if there is a more fundamental way for the BBC to contribute to making "media anywhere" a mass market reality. Getting your favourite programmes on a wide variety of devices is still too difficult for the average consumer. Device makers define what media platform functionality and user experience to support and mostly those are not consistent - which leads to trouble for consumers.

I have asked BBC Research to explore whether we should create/drive an open industry standard for IP-delivered Media On The Go. There is no fixed timeline for the delivery of Research's results at present, but when we have an update we will let you know. In the meantime, I'd be interested to hear what you think.

Erik Huggers is Director, BBC Future Media & Technology.

Looking back over the last decade, the advances in this space were mainly driven by strong competition between software companies. Each had its own motivations for creating proprietary codecs and file formats that lock in customers. Besides the obvious downside of that approach, there were some benefits as well: fast innovation and attractive terms and conditions from a licensing perspective.

Having said that, the BBC has always been a strong advocate and driver of open industry standards. Without these standards, TV and radio broadcasting would simply not function. I believe that the time has come for the BBC to start adopting open standards such as H.264 and AAC for our audio and video services on the web. These technologies have matured enough to make them viable alternatives to other solutions.

The advantage for the audience will be a noticeable improvement in audio and video quality. Furthermore, it should become easier for the media to simply work across a broader range of devices. While it's not a magic bullet, it certainly is a significant step in the right direction. The first service to make content available using these open standards based codecs will be iPlayer. Anthony Rose will have more details of introducing H.264 to the iPlayer later today. It is our intention for other AV services across bbc.co.uk to follow quickly.

Some people may ask: why are you not using your own Dirac codec? I am fully committed to the development and success of Dirac, but for now those efforts are focused on high-end broadcast applications. This autumn, we intend to show the world what can be achieved with these technologies.

Photo of Phil Lewis using H.264 at this year's Mashed

This is a rather important moment for me personally. Having been responsible for driving one of those proprietary alternatives, it feels great to be at the forefront in driving the next wave in internet audio and video technologies and services.

Erik Huggers is Director, BBC Future Media and Technology.

For the first time, BBC audiences will get the BBC's TV and Radio content truly in one place, together and fully integrated. This joins up two world-leading BBC products for our audiences, taking our on-demand services to a whole new level.

Look out for improved categories, bigger playback screen, TV schedules, last played and much more.

On top of that, sound quality will be better and we will offer smooth navigation between BBC Radio and TV programmes opening up whole new areas to users - like Jonathan Ross on TV and Radio, all with a great new User Experience including swoopy carousels! Why not take a peek at the latest promotional film?

Anthony Rose has more details here.

Erik Huggers is Group Controller, BBC Future Media & Technology

My only encounter with Linux has been flashing my wifi access point with dd-wrt firmware (which is great, btw) - but that is obviously not the same thing!

George Wright recently convinced me to take home a laptop with Fedora9 installed.

Would it be possible to easily connect to wpa2-protected wifi? Will it recognize my digital camera - and if so, how easy will it be to manage my pictures? How good will the web browsing experience be given the various plugins one needs to make today's websites work? Lots of questions; time to find out for myself...

To my surprise, I found the experience pretty good. Connecting to my home network was easy and web browsing worked fine using Firefox. I tried BBC iPlayer streaming using Flash and that worked fine too.

Getting pictures of the kids transferred was not a problem. I did have some issues with connecting to my network-attached storage, but that is probably my lack of knowledge. While I think the user experience has some way to go in order to catch up with commercial operating systems, the basic functionality is there.

The one thing I was surprised about was the performance, or lack thereof. I would have expected the operating system to squeeze everything out of the dual processor laptop. Perhaps the issue would be addressed by new updates which were available, but I could not get it to install properly.

Another more fundamental thing I wondered about is the mainstream business applications most people use every day. While good progress is being made with efforts like OpenOffice, I think that future evolutions of Google Docs and the like have a better change of moving the needle.

I am glad that I got a chance to test drive Fedora and as a result have come to believe in the potential of Linux as a mainstream operating system.

As Ashley said in this post last year, the BBC does a lot of work with open standards already - but in the future we plan to do more.

We want to make iPlayer work on all operating systems including open source ones like Fedora and I am confident we'll make good progress on this before the end of the year.

And we also encourage communities to play with our stuff for example at events like Mashed where several hundred developers gather in Alexandra Palace to bring the best technologies together with cool content. Mashed happens this weekend and Matthew Cashmore has more details.

Erik Huggers is Group Controller, BBC Future Media & Technology