Premier League football for IPTV

[BGonaSTICK]

UK triple-play service provider Inuk Networks is to provide access to live Barclays Premier League games on the Setanta Sports 1 channel as part of its new premium TV offering - Freewire TV Extra: Student Pack. The service, which will be available from September this year to students living in university halls of residence, will feature a line-up of 20 premium entertainment, music and sports channels. Access to Setanta Sports 1 will be offered as an add-on to the 30 free digital channels already available on the Freewire TV platform.

The availability of top-level football games has proven to be a key factor in audiences migrating to multi-channel pay-TV platforms, especially among the young adult demographic. Timothy Ryan, GB Marketing Director at Setanta Sports, said that making games available through the Freewire TV service was expanding the number of platforms the content was available on as well as expanding the universe of viewers who could access the content.

Freewire TV offers a range of UK and international free-to-air television channels as a part of its content offering. By using the high-speed JANET network initially to deliver these channels, Inuk Networks overcomes the common obstacles of poor reception and lack of aerials for thousands of on-campus students at universities across the UK.

Source: advanced-television

[BGonaSTICK]

JANET is the network dedicated to the needs of education and research in the UK. It connects the UK’s education and research organisations to each other, as well as to the rest of the world through links to the global Internet. In addition, JANET includes a separate network that is available to the community for experimental activities in network development.

The JANET network connects UK universities, FE Colleges, Research Councils, Specialist Colleges and Adult and Community Learning providers. It also provides connections between the Regional Broadband Consortia to facilitate the DfES initiative for a national schools’ network. Over 18 million end-users are currently served by the JANET network.

The range of activities facilitated by JANET allows individuals and organisations to push back the traditional boundaries of teaching, learning and research methods. For example, JANET’s videoconferencing and video streaming capabilities are being used to deliver lectures to remote groups of students. For researchers, the high capacity of the JANET backbone allows the linking of large data storage and high performance computing facilities at a national and international level.