ITV Chooses BT for New Broadcast Network

BT today announced a new five year contract to provide ITV with a state-of-the-art digital broadcast network across the UK.

BT’s next generation media network will connect ITV’s 13 major broadcasting sites to its data centres, enabling them to transfer large amounts of data and uncompressed HD video between sites, at speeds of up to 10Gbit/s.

The new “X-Net” network, based on BT Wholesale’s new broadcast-specific wavelength technology and high-quality Ethernet services, is expected to be in place by spring 2014.

It will also support compressed media and data links between 32 smaller ITV sites and news bureaus – with the network being managed from BT Wholesale’s International Media Centre at BT Tower, London.

Mark Wilson-Dunn, BT Wholesale’s Global Sales and Marketing Director for BT Media and Broadcast, said: “This is an exciting time for the media industry, as consumers demand more and more content in a variety of formats. It also presents a huge challenge for broadcasters, as the market opportunities and their own capabilities are developing rapidly, so we’re delighted that ITV has chosen BT to support them on that journey.

“We’re delivering an extremely innovative network infrastructure for ITV which combines the best of BT Media and Broadcast’s global managed services with a new wavelength based core network. This will give ITV incredible flexibility and efficiency, as well as providing an unrivalled level of service to help them continue entertaining people, wherever they might be and whatever device they are using.”

William Medlicott, Finance Director, ITV Broadcast said: “Today’s audiences want to watch quality content wherever and whenever they choose using a variety of platforms, and our broadcast network must be flexible in order to meet this demand. BT’s network solution will help us deliver content ready for transmission quickly and effectively across ITV and the variety of partners we collaborate with on a daily basis.”

BT has enjoyed a long and successful partnership with ITV - the largest commercial television network in the UK.

Today, BT Wholesale’s Media and Broadcast unit provides ITV with the network infrastructure to support content digitisation, workflows and TV outside broadcast services, delivering over 50 live events in the last year alone.

The broadcaster was the first customer to join BT’s ground-breaking UK Media Network, which introduced the world to broadcasting over a Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network in 2004.



About ITV
ITV is the largest commercial television network in the UK. It is the home of popular television from the biggest entertainment events, to original drama, major sport, landmark factual series and independent news. It operates a family of channels including ITV, ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 and CITV which are broadcast free-to-air. ITV is also focused on delivering its programming across multiple platforms including itv.com, cable television and other ‘closed’ platforms, mobile devices and games consoles. ITV Studios produces and sells programmes and formats in the UK and worldwide, and comprises of ITV’s UK and international production operations, international distribution, home entertainment, publishing, merchandising and licensing.