Telstra Broadcast Services and BT Announce Strategic Alliance to Enhance Global Network Connectivity
SYDNEY, 21 November 2023—Telstra Broadcast Services (TBS) and BT have entered into an initial five-year strategic alliance to bring together each company’s global media network teams, pooling their vast network infrastructure and localised expertise.
The deal will increase TBS' global footprint by 50% and expand its customer-base to more than 170 broadcast and media organisations worldwide.
As part of the deal, customers of both TBS and BT will have access to the best unified operations of the two Global Media Networks via a product offering headed up by Telstra, including key Asia-Pacific regions with India, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, and other countries.
Customers 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 high-quality media delivery service with the additional opportunity to drive greater global reach and visibility of their content.
“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 organisations to connect to the world,” said Karen Clark, Head of APAC at Telstra Broadcast Services.
“We’re continuing to see rapid growth in content demand and ongoing evolution in technology and distribution channels in response to changing consumer behaviour. 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 optimise their operations and reach global audiences.”
TBS is continuing to build a strong team of media and broadcast specialists in the Asia-Pacific region to provide customers localised knowledge and support. To ensure a seamless experience for all customers, dedicated partner managers based locally in the APAC region will work closely with the team and BT customers.
“We're excited about this collaboration and the opportunity to bring our customers greater content, reach and visibility by utilising the strength of both BT M&B’s and TBS' world-class content delivery networks,” said Faisal Mahomed, Director of Media & Broadcast and UK Portfolio Businesses, BT.
“This approach builds on the reach of our intelligent media platform, Vena, which continues to add wider networks, in addition to cloud integrations, virtualised services such as baseband encoding, and the recent 5G and LEO developments into our portfolio.”
For Telstra, the collaboration supports its ambition to grow its team, reach and investments in technology and innovation across APAC, the UK and other regions globally, a key tenant of its T25 strategy for growth.
"This significant opportunity means we can continue to not only meet the needs of our customers today, but well into the future,” added Clark.
About Telstra Broadcast Services
Telstra Broadcast Services (TBS) helps broadcasters, media and entertainment companies around the world via its robust, high-capacity global media networks and suite of innovative managed services. Through its international field services and special events teams and its worldwide broadcast operations centers, TBS provides a dedicated team of media industry professionals, high-performance media networks, online video and cloud platforms, satellite services, and 24/7 bookings, operations and engineering support.
TBS is part of Telstra, a leading telecommunications and technology company that provides end-to-end solutions globally and offers access to more than 2,000 points of presence across the world. Among its offerings, Telstra provides data and IP networks and network application services, along with professional and managed services to find innovative solutions to customer challenges and help them on their transformation journey to thrive.
For more information about TBS, please visit: https://www.telstra.com.au/business-enterprise/industries/telstra-broadcast-services
About BT Group
BT Group is the UK’s leading provider of fixed and mobile telecommunications and related secure digital products, solutions and services. We also provide managed telecommunications, security and network and IT infrastructure services to customers across 180 countries.
BT Group consists of three customer-facing units: Consumer serves individuals and families in the UK; Business covers companies and public services in the UK and internationally; Openreach is an independently governed, wholly owned subsidiary wholesaling fixed access infrastructure services to its customers - over 650 communications providers across the UK.
British Telecommunications plc is a wholly owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange.
For more information, visit www.bt.com/about