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The Hampshire town of Basingstoke isn't where you'd expect to find one of interactive TV's brightest lights. But the built-up backwater is the unexpected headquarters for one of the leaders in the long-awaited fight back against Sky's leadership of the iTV market.
The man in question is Dr Neil Cashman, CEO of Gointeract TV, and he has been tasked by electronics giant Sony to halt Sky's long- standing dominance in the iTV market and try to provide some serious competition to the digital TV behemoth.
Gointeract TV provides an end-to-end solution for iTV, enabling broadcasters, advertisers and media owners to launch a range of applications, from ads to games, with particular expertise in providing return-path functionality. Although still relatively new to the iTV sector, Cashman has already had a significant impact, having registered 10 patents around digital TV.
Established less than three years ago, Gointeract TV was originally a division of Sony. It was set up in 1999 by Cashman and co-founder Paul Davey to look at how the entertainment company could take advantage of the growth of digital and interactive TV, just as the likes of BT, Matsushita and Sky were doing at the time.
"We had a mandate to look at digital TV and quickly focused on iTV and what we could offer which wasn't already being provided," he says. "We built some prototype solutions and also launched a service for Simply Money."
Although Sony could see the potential and, according to Cashman, "was impressed by our business plan", it decided to spin out the company in 2001, aided by significant funds from both its venture capital arm and Sony Digital Pictures.
"This industry moves extremely quickly and Sony is a very large organisation with a chain of authorisation for different departments. We couldn't afford the time for decisions to be bounced across the world when we had broadcasters approaching us wanting to launch services in four weeks' time."
Cashman, who has a PHD and a background in computer science, having worked for a number of start-ups...