David Farnor | On 03, Sep 2015

ITV has extended its playout contract with Ericsson until 2024.

The new deal will see Ericsson continue to provide playout services for ITV’s portfolio of channels, which includes ITV, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, ITV HD, CITV and their regional variants.

To meet demand from consumers for viewing both on the go and in the living room, Ericsson has designed, built and integrated a new simulcast system to support ITV’s delivery of its channels to multiple devices, platforms and screens. Ericsson says its modular infrastructure will allow the UK broadcaster the flexibility to deliver new services and launch existing services onto new platforms, easily and with a high level of resilience.

Thorsten Sauer, Head of Broadcast and Media Services at Ericsson, comments: “ITV operates one of the most complex broadcast operations in the world. For many years, we have worked together successfully to deliver dynamic commercial channels, while reducing cost, complexity, risk and increasing efficiencies. We look forward to strengthening our relationship further and helping ITV to continue delivering world-class television on every platform and every screen across the UK for years to come.”

Ericsson has helped to shape many evolutions in TV for over 20 years such as digital TV, IPTV, HD, and soon UHD and HDR: the company has notched up five Technical Emmy awards over the years, while its Broadcast & Media Services arm distributes more than 2.7 million hours of programming in more than 90 languages for more than 500 TV channels every year.

For ITV, it’s important to stay up-to-date in a time of changing audience habits.

“Viewers expect a brilliant TV experience whatever platform or device they use to watch our shows,” comments Simon Pitts, Managing Director, Online, Pay, Interactive & Technology at ITV. “We look forward to strengthening our partnership with Ericsson to support our channels and content over the years to come.”

The contract also includes the playout of ITV’s newest TV channels, ITV Encore and ITVBe.

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