BT signs up Shrek in broadband TV deal

Loveable ogre Shrek and the escaped zoo animals from hit movie Madagascar will be among content piped direct to the home when British Telecom launches its broadband TV service this autumn.

The UK carrier today announced that it has signed a video-on-demand film deal with DreamWorks SKG, to provide content for its IP TV service, BT Vision.

This agreement will bring DreamWorks current movies to BT’s video-on-demand service, including Steven Spielberg’s Munich; Madagascar; Just Like Heaven, Red Eye and Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

DreamWorks movies will be available on a pay per view basis and will complement existing agreements BT Vision has with BBC Worldwide, Paramount, Warner Music Group, National Geographic Channel, HIT Entertainment, Nelvana and Turner Broadcasting.

BT is recording strong growth in the broadband space, with the company today announcing that it had 7.9 million wholesale broadband connections as of the end of March, including 356,000 local loop unbundled lines, marking an increase of 2.9 million connections year on year.

The carrier also began offering DSL Max, which offers speeds of up to 8Mbps across the UK, at the end of March and is offering its wholesale customers DSL Max at no extra cost to their existing 2Mbps service.

“New wave” revenue, which is mainly generated from networked IT services, broadband and mobility, increased 28 per cent year on year to ВЈ1.85bn. Broadband revenue alone increased by 44 per cent to ВЈ421m, while mobility revenue increased by 41 per cent to ВЈ82m.

New wave revenue managed to offset the decline in traditional revenues, which declined by 3 per cent year on year continuing recent trends. Overall revenue was 7 per cent higher than last year at ВЈ5.13bn, while EBITDA before specific items was flat year on year at ВЈ1.4bn.

Tags: BT, Entertainment, IPTV, Regional, Telecom services, UK

This entry was posted on May 19th, 2006 and is filed under Operators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.