BELGACOM NSI SELECTS DICAS AS MPEG-4 CODEC PARTNER

Proximus’ Mobile TV powered by dicas MPEG-4 encoding software

15 December 2005 – Brussels, Belgium / Berlin, Germany – dicas, the German video codec software specialist, and Belgacom Network & System Integration (NSI), one of the major ICT integrators in Belgium, have partnered to provide best-of-breed technologies to the Mobile TV industry.

The first project with dicas 3GPP compliant encoder software (MPEG-4 and H.263) integrated in the Belgacom NSI encoder solution is the recently launched Mobile TV service from Proximus. Proximus, the market leader in mobile telephony in Belgium, is 75% owned by the Belgacom Group and 25% by Vodafone and has well over 4.2 million customers. Proximus selected Belgacom NSI for providing the capturing, encoding and delivery of their live video offering on mobile phones.

“dicas are providing us with the overall best video coding solution for this project. We use their quality software in combination with teamwork amongst the engineers in order to fulfil the customer’s needs” commented John Vanhoucke, Sr. Product Manager at Belgacom NSI.

“Belgacom NSI has come up with the perfect solution for Mobile TV taking care of everything that an operator needs to launch and maintain a successful service. As a team, we contribute to making final convergence possible -- content anywhere and anytime.” said Sebastian Moeritz, CEO of dicas.

Proximus is the only mobile operator in Belgium offering 3G services. Since 15 September 2005 Proximus customers using a Vodafone live! 3G mobile phone are able to watch live television, download complete music tracks on their mobile and see and speak to each other using video calling.

14 television channels are now available: VTM, Vitaya, JIM, Canal Z, RTL-TVI, CNN, Euronews (English), Euronews (French), Eurosport (Dutch, French), Télé Bruxelles (French), Kanaal Z (Dutch), Fashion TV and Trace TV.

The overall Belgacom NSI/dicas proposition also includes support for MPEG-4 AVC/H.264.

About Belgacom (http://www.belgacom.be)
Belgacom is the leading telecommunications company in Belgium and a market leader in a number of areas, including retail and wholesale fixed-line telephony services, mobile communications services and broadband data and Internet services. Belgacom offers a comprehensive range of voice, data and Internet fixed-line services to residential and business customers. At the end of June 2004, Belgacom provided approximately 5.2 million fixed connections for residential and business customers. Belgacom Mobile is the leading provider of mobile communications services in Belgium through its Proximus and Pay & Go brands, with approximately 4.2 million active customers.
Belgacom Network & System Integration (NSI) is a business unit within the Fixed Line Services Division that was set up on 1 March 2003. Its mission is to offer companies total solutions in the fields of WAN, LAN and advanced data technology (servers, data protection, data storage, applications outsourcing, voice solutions,etc.) and to manage these integration projects from conception to service delivery.
www.belgacom.be/nsi

About dicas (www.dicas.de)
dicas is an MPEG-focused video coding specialist and a leading developer of ISO MPEG-4 real-time video coding solutions for Broadcast, IPTV, Mobile TV, Internet Streaming, Multimedia and Security applications. Under the brand name mpegable, dicas offers a family of MPEG-4, MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 and 3GPP compliant professional software tools and components for a number of operating systems and DSPs/ICs. dicas also supplies services for the development, customization and optimization of MPEG-based video coding solutions. dicas is the first company to have introduced an MPEG-4 SDK with object-based features in the market. dicas is a member of the MPEG Industry Forum and a supporter of the AVC Alliance.