U.K. satellite pay-television operator BSkyB stepped up its interactive plans in the country, naming technical partners for its interactive portal slated for launch before the end of 2005.

The portal will allow Web site owners to deliver their services to a potential audience of 20 million pay-television subscribers, BSkyB said. The technical partners, Azoth, Demon, Microsoft and Tamblin, will provide a range of services to facilitate the process of developing and hosting content on the portal.

“Sky’s new e-business portal will make it easier than ever before to launch an interactive TV service,” Ian Valentine, technical alliances director at Sky Interactive said. “We welcome the industry’s support for the portal and we look forward to working with our partners to introduce mass market, industry strength tooling and content management systems to help Web site operators realize the potential of service delivery to interactive TV.”