The debate around Canvas is becoming increasingly heated with concerns being aired by both of the UK's leading pay TV companies and the DTG (Digital Television Group, the trade association for digital TV). Indeed, BSkyB has previously suggested that the Canvas qualifies for review by the OFT. The Canvas partners will hope that their voluntary submission to the OFT will help to appease the venture's critics.

The addition of Arqiva as an equal partner brings Canvas much closer to the make-up of the UK's DTT platform and, following the addition of TalkTalk, makes the venture look more like a pan-industry body than the broadcaster-driven platform of the BBC's first submissions. This may help Canvas' case with the OFT which has been asked to rule on whether the "joint venture" constitutes a merger.

However, in its recent response to the BBC Trust's consultation on Canvas, BSkyB not only took issue with the BBC's estimates of Canvas's effect on the UK pay TV business (claiming it could cost the pay TV business more than the £642m estimated by the Trust) but also warned of grounds for a possible legal challenge to the venture, questioning the Trust's view that Canvas would not infringe European Union laws prohibiting state aid for industry. So regardless of the outcome of the OFT review and final BBC Trust ruling, the regulatory process may well have further to go.

For Arqiva, joining Canvas as a equal partner gives it a seat at the table in a platform that, if it lives up to its ambition, will become the leading video-on-demand platform in the UK. But it is a platform that is also dependent on Freeview, which lies at the core of the Canvas go-to-market proposition and in which Arqiva is a stakeholder. Ironically, with Arqiva on board, if and when Canvas does launch, it is likely to provide a distribution outlet for the remnants of the regulator-thwarted Kangaroo, the platform assets of which Arqiva subsequently acquired and repurposed to launch its own online TV service, SeeSaw, last month.