The other is that Sky's James Murdoch and his predecessor as chief executive, Tony Ball, regarded broadband as perhaps too much of a threat, and took the view that it would ultimately be more lucrative to defend the walled garden of encrypted pay TV access than to wander off into expanding universe of cyperspace.Much the same criticisms might be made of British Telecom, which has been incredibly slow to offer pay TV, or indeed attempt to enter the content market at all through its dominant position in broadband. The old copper cable which still forms the rib cage of the BT network, is capable of doing it too. For a price, anyone is allowed to use it to deliver these services.Comparatively low levels of broadband penetration in the early years of DSL was obviously a deterrent, yet you would none the less expect a company as entrepreneurial as BSkyB to be at the forefront of these new media technologies.A broadband connection costs almost as much per month as a basic Sky package, making broadband potentially a significant new source of income for Sky. You no longer need the billions cable has wasted digging up the roads to deliver moving pictures and interactivity down the telephone line. So how come Sky failed to see the light? One explanation is that satellite has been such a winner for Sky that it closed its eyes to the possibilities offered by rivals.This sort of blinkered, arrogant approach to change can be the undoing of even the most successful of companies.

The opportunities for bundling and cross promotion are all too clear. With Sky's mooted acquisition of Easynet, that's about to change.The failure of these companies to act earlier has long struck me as a puzzle, for the DSL technology to make the "triple play" possible for all comers has existed for some years now. Yet die hard supporters have always been able to point to one key advantage over rival platforms - the so-called "triple play" of pay television, traditional telephony and broadband all under one roof.Sky is the undisputed master when it comes to pay TV, and BT is still the dominant supplier of telephony and broadband services Yet unlike cable, neither has so far offered all three. Sir Gerry has largely failed to get the message across that his talents are cheap at the price. By all means, let's have Sir Gerry as executive chairman at Rentokil, but to pay him on the terms demanded is to lose all touch with reality.BSkyB opts for an Easy solutionWith its apparently insatiable appetite for capital and appaling standards of customer service, there's little to commend the dismal history of the UK cable industry. Still, none of this is enough to justify Sir Gerry's "move over and let me have a go" boarding party.The wonder is that he's doing it at all.

He doesn't need the money or the glory, and if he fails, which now seems quite likely, he emerges with a reputation if not quite tarnished, certainly a little damaged To many, the whole heist has looked too greedy and arrogant. It did, but then warned profits for 2005 would be even lower. We are all dead, he said, if the company didn't achieve profits of at least £350m for 2004. As for Brian McGowan, the chairman, true enough he acted to oust the company's founder, Sir Clive Thompson, who by the time he was fired had plainly lost the plot, but he then took eight months to find a new chief executive, during which the business continued to go down the pan.What's more, he over promised. Even so, despite the support of Rentokil's largest shareholder, Franklin Templeton, he's got his work cut out.