14th Apr 2005 07:00
Eckoh Technologies PLC14 April 2005 For immediate release 14 April 2005 Eckoh Technologies plc Eckoh Technologies renew interactive telephony contract with ITV Eckoh Technologies plc ("Eckoh"), one of Europe's largest speech applicationservice providers, today announced it has been re-appointed by ITV, the UK'sbiggest commercial television network, to provide premium rate telephoneservices to the channel. Eckoh anticipates that revenues from the new contractwill be higher than those generated in the previous year as ITV increases theuse of interactivity across its programming. The new contract, which runs until at least June 2006, was awarded following ayear in which Eckoh has successfully operated premium rate telephone servicesfor ITV across a wide range of formats including hit shows such as I'm aCelebrity Get Me Out of Here, Paul O'Grady, Ant and Dec's Saturday NightTakeaway, Stars in their Eyes, Hell's Kitchen, Wish You Were Here, Today andThis Morning. In this period Eckoh have successfully handled more than 28million calls for ITV. 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. For live showsEckoh also provide ITV with real-time monitoring of response from fixed line andmobile calls, SMS and red button using Eckoh's proprietary VISTA platform(Viewer Interaction Statistical Analysis). Nik Philpot, Chief Operating Officer for Eckoh Technologies, says: "This is the largest media contract in the UK for telephony services and we feelvery privileged to have been awarded it for the second year running. I wouldlike to thank the team at Eckoh who have worked so hard on this account, asundoubtedly the high level of service they have delivered, despite the hugepressure that comes with live broadcasting, has been a crucial factor inretaining the business. A year ago I talked about the shared desire we had with ITV to grow interactivetelephony revenues by developing innovative, compelling formats and I'mdelighted that we are seeing the fruition of this which we hope to seecontinuing in 2005." Jane Marshall, Interactive Controller for ITV Broadcasting, commented: "It was great that this year we did not have to run a new tender process forthis contract as Eckoh have consistently demonstrated a high level of customerand technical service. We very much view Eckoh as a partner in our interactivebusiness and we were extremely pleased to be able to appoint them as oursupplier again for the coming year." For further enquiries, please contact Eckoh Technologies plc Tel: 08701 100 700Nik Philpot, Chief Operating Officer Buchanan Communications Tel: 020 7466 5000Mark Edwards/Jeremy Garcia 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 January 2003, Eckoh signed a landmark deal to create an exclusive speechalliance with BT to provide hosted speech recognition solutions to theircorporate client base over the next 2 years. This contract was then subsequentlyextended until December 2006. In December 2003, BT and Eckoh announcedsignificant contracts to the value of £6m with UGC Cinemas, TD Waterhouse, RNIBand Wire-E and now have live services with over 20 clients including ATOC,Barclays, Lloyds TSB and Enterprise Rent-a-car. In addition to those above, Eckoh has direct contracts to supply hosted SpeechSolutions to clients including Vue Cinemas, William Hill, 02, Virgin Mobile andNorthern Ireland Electricity. Eckoh has a call processing platform of 10,000 lines (capable of handling over500,000 calls an hour) of which over 6,000 lines incorporate speech recognitiontechnology making it the largest speech enabled call processing platform inEurope. Eckoh also operates the following businesses: * IVR - following the acquisition of Intelliplus Group plc in Sept 2003, Eckoh is one of the largest providers of managed IVR and SMS services in the UK to media clients including ITV, BBC, Trinity Mirror, Channel 4, Endemol, Celador and EMAP. * Network Services - under the "Symphony" and "Freecom" brands, Eckoh supplies fixed line and mobile telephony services, broadband and data services to SMEs in the UK and Ireland. Following the acquisition of Intelliplus Network Services now has an SME customer base of over 13,000. In the year to 31 March 2004 Eckoh Technologies plc generated a turnover of£62.5 million and had a cash balance of £10.2m. Further information 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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