18th Apr 2006 08:01
Eckoh Technologies PLC18 April 2006 For immediate release 18 April 2006 Eckoh Technologies plc Eckoh Technologies renew interactive telephony contract with ITV and win new contract with ITV Play Eckoh Technologies plc ("Eckoh"), one of Europe's largest speech applicationservice providers, today announced that it has been re-appointed by ITV, theUK's biggest commercial television network, to provide premium rate telephoneservices for programming on it's channels. Eckoh has also been appointed as thepreferred telephony supplier for ITV's new channel ITV Play which will focus on'participation TV' programming. The new contract, which runs until at least September 2007, was awardedfollowing a year in which Eckoh has successfully managed telephone services forITV across more than thirty hit shows including I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out ofHere!, Celebrity Love Island, Soapstar Superstar, Ant and Dec's GameshowMarathon and This Morning. In this period Eckoh have successfully handled morethan 30 million calls for ITV. Eckoh anticipates that revenues from the new contract will be significantlyhigher than those generated in the previous year with the introduction of ITVPlay in April 2006. ITV Play programming will be shown across ITV's family ofchannels, and on the ITV Play channel when it launches on the DigitalTerrestrial Television and Digital Satellite Television platforms. The technical development work and infrastructure necessary for the Play formatsis substantially more complex than for traditional broadcast generatedtelephony, and Eckoh's experience in delivering and managing high-endapplications through their Speech Solutions division was a critical factor inITV's decision that Eckoh was also the right partner for ITV Play. As part ofthis development Eckoh's proprietary real-time monitoring console VISTA (ViewerInteraction Statistical Analysis) has been upgraded to create VISTA-PLAY, whichwill enable the production teams on the various Play formats to see instantly acomprehensive snapshot of statistical analysis and to use this to tailor how theaudience interacts with the shows. ITV will continue to use Eckoh's market leading call processing platform which,with around 10,000 ports, is the largest of its kind in the UK, enablingservices to be launched quickly and with the maximum flexibility. Nik Philpot, Chief Operating Officer for Eckoh Technologies, says: "The ITV contract is the largest and most prestigious telephony contract in themedia sector to be awarded and this is now the third time in a row that Eckohhas been fortunate enough to win the business. It is a daily challenge todeliver the quality of service ITV requires, and in particular to satisfy thedemands of live broadcasting across a 24 hour window, and huge credit must go tothe team at Eckoh who have helped us to retain the contract. Once again we have seen year-on-year activity with ITV increase but what isreally exciting about the coming year is that we are expecting to see a quantumjump in the revenue generated with the launch of the new Play formats which takethe idea of participation tv to a new level. We are looking forward immensely to taking our partnership with ITV into thisnew era." Jane Marshall, Commercial Development Director of ITV Consumer, commented: "Eckoh has delivered a first class performance throughout 2005, making it aneasy decision to reappoint the company as our supplier of PRTS services. Thebreadth of services Eckoh provides and the clients that the company works withgave us the confidence that it remained the right partner for ITV." For further enquiries, please contact Eckoh Technologies plcNik Philpot, Chief Operating Officer Adam Moloney, Group Finance Directorwww.eckoh.com Tel: 01442 458 300 Buchanan CommunicationsMark Edwards/Jeremy Garcia Tel: 020 7466 5000 Notes to Editors About Eckoh Technologies: Eckoh Technologies plc designs, builds, hosts and manages speech solutions forlarge corporations and organisations using ASR (Advanced Speech Recognition) andIVR (Interactive Voice Response) technologies. It is a leading UK serviceprovider and infrastructure owner/operator, and intends to exploit theanticipated growth in demand for speech solutions across Europe. In 2003, Eckoh formed a strategic alliance with BT to capitalise on the growingopportunity for speech technology in the corporate marketplace. The combinedstrengths of both parties have created an unrivalled and value-added speechproposition and clients of the alliance include: Barclays Stockbrokers, TDWaterhouse, NIE, UGC Cinemas, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National Rail Enquiries andThree Valleys Water. In addition to those above, Eckoh has direct contracts to supply hosted SpeechSolutions to clients including Vue Cinemas, William Hill, 02, Virgin Mobile,Ideal Shopping Direct, Tote and The London Stock Exchange. Eckoh is also a market leader in providing interactive services to large mediaowners and has amongst its clients ITV, the UK's largest commercial broadcaster,Trinity Mirror, the largest newspaper publisher and IPC, the leading consumermagazines group. Eckoh has a call processing platform of 10,000 lines (capable of handling over650,000 calls an hour) of which over 8,000 lines incorporate speech recognitiontechnology making it the largest speech enabled call processing platform inEurope. In September 2005 Symphony Telecom Holdings plc ("Symphony"), a wholly ownedsubsidiary of Eckoh was floated separately on AIM. Eckoh now holds a 64.64%shareholding in Symphony Telecom Holdings plc. STH - under the "Symphony" and "Anglia" brands - supplies fixed line and mobile telephony products and services,to SMEs in the UK and Ireland. In the first 6 months trading to 30 September 2005 Eckoh Technologies plcgenerated a turnover of £55 million and had a cash balance of £12.5m. Furtherinformation can be found at www.eckoh.com. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
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