Interactivity via digital satellite

Open Interactive was created by its shareholders, BSkyB, BT, HSBC and MEI to deliver interactive television. That is, interactivity which is entertaining, informative and easy to use-just like television. Of course that implies that the service will be rich, offering shopping, banking, information services, games and e-mail under the brand name Open. However interactivity as envisaged by Open implies much more than merely displaying Web pages on television, imposing technical requirements on a number of key components of the system, principally the digital set top box and a delivery mechanism which mixes high bandwidth digital satellite transmission with on-line data delivered by the telephone network