Digital Rum announces partnership with Sky

Digital Rum has announced a strategic partnership with Sky that will allow Sky subscribers to purchase goods and services through Sky Net, its new interactive TV based e-business portal.
The new consumer services will be available in over 8 million UK homes to over 22 million individuals. As part of the deal, Digital Rum will also facilitate the acquisition of retail, travel, content and entertainment partners to provide these services.
The Sky Net portal is designed as a mechanism by which consumers can easily access and use popular internet content and e-business services through interactive TV. With Digital Rum’s proven experience in providing portal transactional services with retailers such as Littlewoods Shop Direct and Argos, Sky chose to partner with Digital Rum so that it can easily add this secure purchasing capability to any service deployed. It allows payment for goods or services to take place entirely through the mobile or interactive TV.
“Transactional services online, via the mobile and now through interactive television are becoming an increasingly demanded consumer service,” said Ian Valentine, Technical Alliances Director at Sky Networked Media. “Digital Rum’s experience in the provision and aggregation of these types of services will prove invaluable as we look to expand the services offered by our e-business portal.”
With their direct links into retailer’s systems, Digital Rum provide a rich shopping, ticketing and information service to many of the UK’s mobile operators. Recognising Digital Rum’s unique proposition and experience in this space, Sky pushed through the addition of a TV presentation layer to the dR platform, thus enabling Sky customers to take advantage of all the existing retail and transactional services in the DR system, from the comfort of their own homes, and with the ease of use of iDTV. (CD/CL)