Posturing by Sky and ITV. Exactly the same happened last year with the ITV3 launch - and agreement wasnt finally reached about satellite delivery until 3 hours before ITV3 launched, leading to Granada Plus being sacrificed and pulled off air in an a advert break midway through a programme!
I think it will launch on schedule, otherwise Sky gets loads of unneccessary bad press about sabotaging a launch of a commercial rival. However, we will see on Nov 1st.