Greg Dyke, the BBC's Director-General, has made some potentially controversial comments about the corporation's future role in digital terrestrial television should the broadcaster's joint bid with Crown Castle fail.

In the second half of a speech entitled "Advancing the National Broadcaster" made today at a broadcasting conference in London, Dyke indicated that if another bid won the licences without meeting four key objectives, "it's hard to see how the BBC could justify spending even more money on DTT."

The conditions are four-fold. Firstly, Dyke said that the service must be a "simple free-to-view proposition", a condition only fully met by BBC/CC and the DTB bid. Secondly, the technical standard for transmission must be adjusted; all bids contain an element discussing the need to change the transmission mode to 16QAM, sacrificing the number of total services for more robust coverage.

Thirdly, the platform must be "open and competitive" - Dyke cited the example of Sky News being present in the BBC bid even though it's against the corporation's interest (in this case BBC News 24). This is quite an interesting condition. The BBC bid also involves BSkyB; the DTA bid involves both ITV and Channel 4; while only SDN and the DTB bids specifically state that they will take, as far as possible, a "hands-off" role with regards to channel provision. This could potentially be a sticking point for Dyke. Although he has said the BBC wishes to see an open and competitive platform, two content providers are involved in the bid; the same can be said for the DTA one. Therefore, if one were to take this point literally, only the SDN and DTB bids fully indicate a separation of roles between that of multiplex operator and content provider. However, the counter-balance to this argument is that the BBC and ITV bids both contain the prospect of three channels (albeit in a time-sharing arrangement) from Turner Broadcasting, which could potentially rival their own content. This does however, remain a point for debate.

Fourthly, Dyke insists the platform must be "financially secure", and that "venture capitalists" would "run a mile if the going gets tough". This is evidently a direct jab at the bid from DTB, which is reliant upon venture capital group Apax Partners for funding.

Dyke did say that "...we will, of course, continue to broadcast our channels," but continued "...we're already spending around £20 million a year on DTT to reach around a million people – this is not good value for licence fee money. We’d have to think very hard before spending extra money on transmission and marketing or giving it extra on-air promotion if we couldn't see it pulling through."

What do you think of these comments - are they a veiled threat that if another bid wins, the BBC will pull promotion of DTT; or is it the Director-General showing pragmatism at a time of stiff competition in digital markets? Have your say in our terrestrial forum.