BBC TECHNOLOGY ANNOUNCE INTEL STREAMING DEAL

THE BBC's new commercial subsidiary BBC Technology have announced the acquisition of Intel's European streaming capacity which will strengthen the new company's business capabilities.
BBC Technology, which commenced trading less than a month ago, also announced the formation of three alliances with key technology companies, Global Crossing, IBM and Sun Microsystems.
The expansion of BBC Technology's capacity to provide media rich streaming solutions involves buying a capacity to offer up a further 25,000 concurrent streams from the purpose built Intel Internet Media Services centre in Reading, England. This Internet Broadcasting Operations Centre includes a range of new equipment which can provide comprehensive ingest, edit, re-purposing, streaming and customer demonstration. The extension of the business includes the purchase of equipment, software and recruitment of key personnel from Intel.
The BBC's technology operation has provided the technological support to the BBC's website, bbc.co.uk, the most popular content site in Europe which achieves around 250 million hits a month and is one of the world's most media rich internet sites, since it launched in 1997. With this acquisition the new limited company is positioned to open up that expertise to commercial customers via a separate base, catering for clients in Europe, the US and elsewhere in the world.
The alliance between BBC Technology and Global Crossing Media & Entertainment Markets, will offer the worldwide media and entertainment business community a platform on which to create and connect.
BBC Technology's expertise, developed to meet the exacting demands of the BBC's radio, television and Internet broadcasting services, combined with Global Crossing's ability to deliver rich-media content over a 101,000 route mile network that links five continents and over 200 cities, provides an integrated solutions platform which can be jointly marketed to global media and entertainment businesses.
IBM and BBC Technology plan to market their combined digital media solutions and skills through their respective sales channels. This will include providing commercial consulting and integration services to customers and leveraging the respective solutions, extensive web/content hosting and outsourcing services. Initially, the BBC Technology/IBM partnership will focus on the key emerging market segments of digital media production, content management and distributions for television and radio.
The alliance between BBC Technology and Sun Microsystems will help media, network and enterprise companies utilise their digital and legacy assets more effectively. It will combine the leading edge industry expertise in BBC Technology Ltd with Sun Microsystems' established position in Enterprise, IP and Service Provider solutions. (CD)