September 1, 2003 |
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NTT Com Launches Premium Broadband Addition to UEFA Website |
| TOKYO, JAPAN—NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com) announced today that it has launched a premium broadband, members-only UEFA (Union des Associations
Européennes de Football) site in Japanese (http://jppremium.uefa.com). The new website provides an extensive array of pay-per-view soccer content including speed streaming for UEFA champion league matches, soccer news updates, in depth feature articles, and a photo gallery of star soccer players. The premium site features unique content in Japanese, and is a first for this type of service in any language. The UEFA international website (www.uefa.com) is Europe's largest soccer portal, boasting 4 million hits per day. NTT Com has worked closely with the UEFA in launching and operating the Japanese version of the free-access portion of the site (jp.uefa.com) since January 2003. The broadband site offers high speed streaming of both full games and highlights of UEFA champion league contests, in which top European teams compete for the continental club title. The state-of-the-art platform for delivering this content incorporates DRM (Digital Right Management), membership administration and bill accounting for authorized use. The premium service offers streaming at up to 2Mbps of UEFA championship matches from 1992 to the present, with the same smoothness of motion as TV broadcasting. Access to content is pay-per-view, with monthly billing based on the number of downloads from the network. Download rates of 300Kbps and 1Mbps are also possible for optimal accommodation of individual user capabilities. Although live coverage of matches will not be offered, immediate post-match streaming will be possible. An electronic bulletin board system (BBS) will also be provided to enable soccer fans to interact with one another. Initial membership fee and fixed monthly fee will be 1,000 yen and 300 yen, respectively. The charge for downloading a single piece of content will range from 100 to 300 yen. Once downloaded, a member can view or listen to that content as many times as desired over a 30 day period. NTT Com plans to eventually construct an online-shopping site for soccer goods, as well as providing related website support for mobile portals such as i-mode. The company will also move to establish soccer websites in other Asian languages as well. NTT Com's strategy envisions linkage between OCN and other provider portal sites for mutual support in content marketing. In the future, NTT Com will continue to strive for solutions that assist leading overseas content providers in enhancing marketing strategies in Japan and other parts of the Far East. This will entail constantly evolving and ever more sophisticated content streaming, carefully tailored to user demand. About NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com) NTT Com, a Tokyo-based subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, provides long-distance and international services for voice, video and data communication reaching more than 200 countries. NTT Com also provides world-class IP services under the NTT/VERIO brand, as well as managed data, multimedia and additional services under the Arcstar brand. For more information, please visit www.ntt.com |
