NTL launches. They needed 10K to 20K boxes built in Q1............
multi-international.com
NTL, Flextech Push Into Interactive Arena
By CHRIS FORRESTER April 5, 1999
London -- British MSO NTL Inc. launched a nationwide interactive-services platform last week, getting a head start on competitors Telewest Communications plc and Cable & Wireless Communications plc.
NTL's service, "iTV," bowed last Wednesday with a lineup of 42 services. Jeremy Thorp, group managing director of NTL Digital Services, said NTL hopes to sign up 100,000 subscribers by the end of the year. The iTV service is transmitted to subscribers over telephone wires.
NTL, which is 5 percent-owned by Microsoft Corp., will charge subscribers $24 per month for iTV. The fee includes online charges, as well as a set-top box and wireless keyboard.
The service features content such as news, travel information, weather, online shopping from British retailer Tesco Stores, content from the British Broadcasting Corp., phone listings from Thomson Directories and theater and event ticketing from Ticketmaster plc.
Flextech plc, the U.K. multichannel programmer part-owned by Liberty Media International, will also be a major content supplier to iTV. And the interactive arena is one in which Flextech itself sees considerable growth.
Flextech chief executive Adam Singer said this year is the beginning of a new era in TV thanks to digital-satellite and digital-terrestrial television in the United Kingdom.
"The Internet is an opportunity for Flextech to be Flextech all over again," he said, describing the Web as an essential and logical extension to its business.
The company established Flextech Interactive last year, with associated Web sites for all its channels. In January, it launched "SceneOne," a Web site that is expected to spawn an accompanying pay TV channel this year.
Flextech invested more than $15 million in interactive services last year -- a figure that Singer called "cautious." This year, the company will more than double that amount.
Meanwhile, Thorp said iTV expects to sign up a considerable portion of the 1.1 million homes that are connected to NTL's network. The service will also be transmitted on digital-terrestrial services.
He added that NTL is talking to other broadband-service providers, and he appeared optimistic about the progress of the talks. "We want to be a national player in this business," Thorp said, noting that the company hopes to provide iTV over NTL's hybrid fiber-coaxial network.
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