ZDF, DEUTSCHE TELEKOM AND THE FANTASTIC CORPORATION INTEND TO CO-DEVELOP REVOLUTIONARY WIRELESS BROADBAND SERVICES FOR GERMAN CONSUMER MARKET
ZDF, Deutsche Telekom and The Fantastic Corporation intend to jointly develop a series of wireless high-speed broadcast services for delivery to consumers across Germany, based on Fantastic's software technology. These services will offer a revolutionary approach to mass-media and will seamlessly combine digital TV and audio broadcasts with interactive content. This is the world's first broadband mobile application for the business-to-consumer mass market.
Mainz / Bonn / Zug, July 3, 2000 - ZDF, Deutsche Telekom and The Fantastic Corporation announced today their intent to co-develop a series of exciting new media services for the German mass-market. ZDF, which is Germany's leading broadcaster with a daily reach of 36 million households, will provide the content over a bouquet of enhanced digital TV channels. Deutsche Telekom, Europe's largest telecommunications company, will use its nationwide infrastructure to transmit the content across the country. The Fantastic Corporation will provide its broadband content distribution and management software to enable the distribution of the content. The three companies will jointly specify requirements for the receiving hardware and work with hardware vendors.
The services will deliver all categories of digital multimedia to Internet enabled devices at high and consistent speed. Fantastic's software allows end-consumers to experience a single medium whereby web content is seamlessly integrated with televised content. The solution overcomes the bottlenecks of the Internet by providing the bandwidth sensitive media elements through a delivery mechanism which is infinitely faster than the World Wide Web.
The agreement between the three companies follows the completion of a series of successful wireless broadband pilots conducted throughout 1999. One of these pilots, shown to the public at IFA 99 in Berlin, included the car manufacturer BMW and demonstrated convincingly how the new technology could be utilized for effective delivery of broadband multimedia into cars at a speed of 16 megabits per second - 1,400 times faster than the data rates of GSM phones. Another pilot was conducted with mobile phone leader Nokia, showing handheld devices, successfully receiving multimedia content. The communication speed was 14.95 megabits per second - enough to support several simultaneous TV quality video streams in the palm of the user's hand. Both pilots were based on unidirectional broadband content delivery combined with an option to dial back over a mobile phone.
Commented Reto Braun, Chairman and CEO of Fantastic: "This venture is the beginning of a new era for Fantastic where we increasingly build on our international successes. As an enabler of corporate broadband communication, this is a first important step into the much larger consumer arena. I believe that these services will change the paradigms of Internet, broadcasting and mobile communication. This will stimulate a new wave of innovative media applications and services in and beyond Germany."
Professor Dr. A. Ziemer, Executive Vice President Production & Engineering of ZDF commented: "We believe that digital media has reached an inflection point where the distinction between broadcasting and the Internet will break down. Electronic media will be broadband, always-on, and available everywhere. For the user, this will mean a new and vastly improved experience: broadcasting and Internet becomes one. For content providers like ourselves this will open up a new way to bring our services and content to our clients, even when they are not at home. Together with our partners, we look forward to driving this step in reception technology in Germany."
Added Mr. Volker Steiner, spokesperson of management of Deutsche Telekom: "Europe has over the last few years developed strong leads in digital broadcasting and mobile communications. We look forward to building on our long-standing relationship with ZDF and our more recent alliance with Fantastic to provide innovative services to the German consumer market.." Deutsche Telekom operates Europe's largest Internet service provider, T-Online, Europe's largest cable network, Europe's largest telephone network and is a leading shareholder in the world's two largest direct broadcast satellites operators.
The partners expect that the first services will be available to the consumer in the second half of 2001.
Deutsche Telekom, with revenues of EUR 35.5 billion in 1999, is Europe's largest telecommunications company and the third largest carrier worldwide. Deutsche Telekom has over 14 million marketed ISDN channels, making the company the world leader in ISDN. And with 5.5 million T-Online customers, the company is Europe's largest Internet provider. Offering a complete range of products and services, Deutsche Telekom has more than 48 million telephone lines in service. We also serve around 21 million mobile telephony customers throughout Europe (including majority and minority shareholdings). With our majority stake in the information-technology group debis Systemhaus (upon cartel approval), we will become the number 2 player in Europe in providing information technology solutions to multinational companies worldwide. Visit the Deutsche Telekom web site at: www.telekom.de/international
The Fantastic Corporation (Zug, Switzerland) is the leading provider of end to end software solutions for broadband data broadcasting. This is an emerging communications technology which combines point-to-multipoint digital broadcasting with point-to-point Internet connectivity, in order to deliver rich interactive media content to PCs, digital set-top boxes or handheld devices (including 3G mobile phones) over any broadband IP network.
By merging the inherent bandwidth and speed benefits of broadcasting technologies with the interactivity of the Internet, broadcast data provides superior content distribution and interaction in an increasingly IP-centric world. Fantastic's end to end software supports the rapid growth of the "data broadcast" industry.
Fantastic's customers are typically in two categories. The first includes network operators, satellite companies and any other company providing broadband data transmission services. The second category is content providers, such as media or entertainment companies, or any organisation wishing to transmit large volumes of digital data to target receiver groups quickly and efficiently.
Fantastic is a public company, quoted on the Frankfurt Stock exchange using the symbol: FAN
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For further information, please contact:
The Fantastic Corporation
Cornelia von Dewitz
Public Relations
Tel +44 1483 77 00 76
Fax +44 1483 77 22 62
E-mail c.vondewitz@fantastic.com
Or visit our web site at www.fantastic.com
The Fantastic Corporation is a registered trademark. Channel Management Center (CMC), Channel Editorial Center (CEC), CEC Master, and MediaSurfer are trademarks of The Fantastic Corporation.
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