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.

Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) today announced that its family of triple play applications (Alcatel 5900 Communications TV, Alcatel 5900 Amigo TV and Alcatel 5900 My Own TV) have received an award from the International Engineering Consortium (IEC). Announced at Broadband World Forum Asia 2006, being held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from 15-18 May, Alcatel was recognized in the “Content, Entertainment, Applications, and Services” category.

These new and innovative applications are developed to run on top of the Microsoft TVВ® IPTV Edition software platform and are designed to address consumer demands for more personal content, the ability to share community content and a desire to communicate with friends or family in remote locations. All three applications are being demonstrated at Booth 1001 at the Broadband World Forum Asia 2006.

Submissions are judged by a review committee composed of industry experts from vendor companies, service providers and industry associations.

“The competition was stiff with many fine entrants,” noted IEC Content Director, Tom Costello. “The selection process was very difficult with an exceptional group of InfoVision Awards this year. We recognize InfoVision Finalists as products that provide superior service to the industry and the community.”

The finalists of the 2006 InfoVision Finalist Award were judged according six criteria, including: value of service or technology (in solving recognized technology problems, meeting network requirements, optimizing service and performance, and/or enhancing customer service), overall quality of innovation and contribution to technology advancement, originality and vision, potential contribution toward positive industry growth and service, market success/acceptance and contribution to end-user quality of experience and service efficiency.

What to expect at the Alcatel booth
Visit Alcatel at Booth 1001 during the Broadband World Forum Asia 2006, being held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from 15-18 May, to see demonstrations of our award-winning triple-play applications, including:

* The Alcatel 5900 Communications TV application leverages IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) technology and extends communications to the television set. Calling line ID (CLID) information is displayed on the TV, notifying users of an incoming call. Communication profile management lets consumers use the TV (in addition to the PC and the phone) to manage their communications profile (e.g., subscribe to a new service, like call forwarding). Click-to-connect lets you initiate a call from the TV by consulting the on-screen address book or call history. (The phone handles the actual call.) In a nutshell, Alcatel 5900 Communications TV transforms your TV into a communications hub.

* The Alcatel 5900 Amigo TV application allows viewers to watch TV with remote friends and family as if they were in the same room. Personalized, on-screen avatars (or emoticons) are used to represent all viewers in an “overlay” (displayed on top of the watched channel), allowing them to chat (using a group voice chat or via text chat) while watching the program together. Multimedia animations are also available, allowing viewers to express their emotions by sending winks or moving cartoons to their friends’ screens.

* The Alcatel 5900 My Own TV application provides a user-friendly way to upload multimedia content (movies and photos) to a network location (via the PC) thereby creating “their own” TV channel. A dedicated group of people (e.g., friends, family, the community or an affinity group) is then asked to subscribe to this personal channel where the content is integrated via the electronic programming guide (EPG) on their television, just like any other channel.