SYDNEY—Telstra Broadcast Services (TBS) and BT have signed an initial five-year strategic alliance agreement to bring together their global media networks and pool their network infrastructure and localized expertise.
The agreement will enable TBS to grow its global footprint by 50% and expand its customer base to more than 170 broadcast and media organizations around the world, the companies said.
“Our priority at TBS is to offer a world-class global content delivery service for our customers, including the largest distribution network with the most flexibility and options for organizations to connect to the world,” said Karen Clark, head of APAC at TBS.
“We’re continuing to see rapid growth in content demand and ongoing evolution in technology and distribution channels in response to changing consumer behavior. The focus of TBS and BT’s teams and operations on the right customer outcome will ensure our customers have the very best partner to respond to the fast-changing broadcast environment and help them optimize their operations and reach global audiences.”
The deal gives the customers of both companies access to their unified operations, including their global media networks, via a product offering from Telstra. It brings key Asia-Pacific regions, including India, Malaysia, Hong Kong and other countries into the fold, they said.
Media companies will benefit from Telstra’s high-capacity media networks, generating expanded reach and distribution of their content. This will be supported by an increased local team in APAC and access to the broader suite of TBS products and services, including field services, special events teams and broadcast operations centers in Sydney, Melbourne, Hong Kong, London and Pittsburgh.
Telstra and BT customers will continue to access the same media delivery service with the additional opportunity to drive greater global reach and visibility of their content, the companies said.
“We're excited about this collaboration and the opportunity to bring our customers greater content, reach and visibility by utilizing the strength of both BT M&B’s and TBS' world-class content delivery networks,” said Faisal Mahomed, director of media and broadcast and UK Portfolio Businesses at BT.
“This approach builds on the reach of our intelligent media platform, Vena, which continues to add wider networks, in addition to cloud integrations, virtualized services such as baseband encoding, and the recent 5G and LEO developments into our portfolio.”
