BBC new media and technology chief Ashley Highfield says the corporation will work closely with tech giants such as Microsoft and Apple as well as distribution players such as ntl and HomeChoice as it looks to revamp its web site and deliver programmes online.

Sharing a conference platform in Las Vegas with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, Highfield pledged the BBC would work with partners in developing the web's next generation (termed web 2.0) of products and applications.

Highfield said that the BBC had to ensure that, along with producing world class programmes, it also had to be highly technologically innovative in offering audiences platform-neutral, universal access to its content. To keep pace with the unprecedented rate of change, it was imperative that the BBC worked with partners such as Microsoft, on a non-exclusive basis he added.

"We have a duty of universality," said Highfield, "so it's vital that we innovate through a number of strategic partnerships with technology companies and distributors such as Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Homechoice, NTL and Telewest.

"The challenge is to create an end-to-end infrastructure for all our programming, to deliver content to all our audiences in the most cost-effective, simple and flexible way possible. The last ten yards of railway track - seamless delivery from the PC to the TV - is still to be built within the home."

Highfield offered a vision of this 'Web 2.0' world when he showed how a future version of the BBC's current work-in-progress iMP (Integrated Media Player) might be integrated and delivered by the PC desktop, using features and enhancements present in Windows Vista, Microsoft's new operating system due for release towards the end of the year.

Highfield said that  the BBC's integrated media player (iMP), which offered 5,000 triallists access to hundreds of programmes within a seven-day 'catch-up' window over five months, would launch later this year subject to approval being given by the BBC's governors.