Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV? or “I left my wife because I am in love with the TV set”* Célia Quico TV Cabo Portugal Direcção de Serviços Digitais Interactivos Avenida 5 de Outubro 208, Lisboa PORTUGAL celia.quico@netcabo.pt Abstract Using the Portuguese interactive television service from TV Cabo as a working basis, this paper discusses the potential of communication services such as chat, forums and multi-user games to act as iTV community builders and to become real iTV killer applications. In the three cases presented in this paper – multi-player iTV games, interactive football matches and iTV talk-show “Noites Interactivas” - the major characteristics outlined for virtual communities can be found, indicating that iTV applications can act as virtual communities builders. Also the success of these applications in the TV Cabo service, as well as other successful cases observed in industry leaders such as the BBC, indicate that they have the potential of becoming true killer applications for interactive television. Keywords Interactive Television, iTV Killer Applications, iTV Chat, iTV Forums, iTV Games, iTV Programs, Enhanced TV, iTV Communication Services, Virtual Communities. Introduction Using the Portuguese interactive television service from TV Cabo as a working basis, this paper discusses the potential of communication services such as chat, forums and multi-user games to act as iTV community builders and to become real iTV killer applications. My interest in the subject matter stems from observations of users' behavior in particular applications of the TV Cabo interactive television service. In a way, for these users the television set has become a communication medium, a window into the living room of someone else, rather than a mere broadcast medium. For instance, during interactive football matches, users engage very actively in discussions about the referee’s decision or about the performance of one of the teams, and even complain about the quality of the service provided by the operator. While TV Cabo service offers several communication applications, the dynamics observed during the interactive football matches surpass anything else available. The same can be said about the multi-user games and the forum functionality of the interactive talk-show "Noites Interactivas". Since the specific subject matter of this paper – iTV communication services - is recent and as yet not fully understood, scientific papers are few and far between. Still, some researchers are already working in this field, such as Jorge Abreu, Pedro Almeida and Vasco Branco from the Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal [1]. Nevertheless, the potential of iTV communication services is yet to be explored by the iTV industry as well as the Academic world. For this reason, the sources for this paper are predominantly feedback gathered by the iTV Cabo Call Center in its interaction with the service’s users and, on the other hand, testimonies from the project managers of the case study applications. Even if the mass deployment of the service has not yet reached the level expected – in January 2003, the company announced that it had reached 8.000 subscribers [2], which corresponds to about 24.000 users -, TV Cabo's service has shown the following in terms of subscribers’ usage: 99