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The BBC plans for the channel to be available on digital satellite, cable, terrestrial and the internet and to broadcast nine hours a day once established. It is currently running a trial HD channel on Sky's satellite platform and Virgin Media that has featured such programmes as 'Planet Earth', 'Silent Witness', 'Hotel Babylon' and 'Heroes'.

The regulator concluded that the proposed service was unlikely to have significant adverse effects on the market.

Ofcom did allow that the service could have some negative impact on IPTV operators, because current broadband infrastructure cannot handle HD delivery to significant numbers of people, and commercial broadcasters, because they could lose out on "modest" revenues.

Ofcom also outlined three recommendations to the BBC Trust, which is responsible for finally clearing the BBC executive's applications to launch new services.

These were: that the BBC holds to its plans to make the service mixed genre; that it should work to the objective of delivering the channel on IPTV as soon as it is technically feasible to do so; and that the BBC Trust should take full account of wider technological developments in digital terrestrial television.

The current uncertainty over the amount of spectrum that will be available for broadcasters after digital switch-off led the BBC to propose two options for the channel on Freeview. If enough spectrum is available, it will broadcast its full nine-hour schedule from 3pm to midnight and, if not, it will only broadcast from 2am to 6am.