Posted: 09th Jul, 2007 By: MarkJ
Cable & Wireless has today announced the launch of a wholesale national Internet TV (IPTV) service, which will be delivered via broadband as part of a £70m five-year deal with Inuk Networks:
The contract sees Cable & Wireless providing Inuk with access to the UKs most advanced nationwide multicast network enabling the delivery of television, telephony and broadband services.
In addition, Cable & Wireless will offer Inuks IPTV platform as a white label solution to other wholesale DSL customers who want to provide their customers with a digital television offering.
Cable & Wireless will deliver this triple-play offering to Freewire, Inuks go-to-market subsidiary. Freewire will provide all consumers in the UK with added supplier choice for multichannel television.
Currently, Inuk offers triple-play services to UK students in collaboration with JANET, the university backbone network. To date, over forty universities representing over 100,000 student rooms, have signed up to the Freewire service. Using Cable & Wireless nationwide multicast network, Freewire will be able to extend its proposition beyond the current user base of students in university accommodation and into the homes across the UK from March 2008.
The Inuk platform can also be customised and delivered as a solution to other broadband providers and network operators, providing flexibility in TV, voice and converged entertainment services.
The move makes Internet TV services more accessible to some ordinary broadband ISP's, which could trigger a handful of providers into expanding the services they offer.
However the technical details of such a product are unclear and no doubt ISP's would want to consider the impact on their networks.