Cable & Wireless will deliver national IPTV services via broadband, through a ground breaking wholesale deal with Inuk Networks. Worth around £70 million over five years, the contract sees Cable & Wireless providing Inuk with access to the UK’s most advanced nationwide multicast network enabling the delivery of television, telephony and broadband services.

In addition, Cable & Wireless will offer Inuk’s IPTV platform as a white label solution to other wholesale DSL customers who want to provide their customers with a digital television offering.

Cable & Wireless will deliver this triple-play offering to Freewire, Inuk’s go-to-market subsidiary. Freewire will provide all consumers in the UK with added supplier choice for multichannel television.

Currently, Inuk offers triple-play services to UK students in collaboration with JANET, the university backbone network. To date, over forty universities representing over 100,000 student rooms, have signed up to the Freewire service. Using Cable & Wireless’ nationwide multicast network, Freewire will be able to extend its proposition beyond the current user base of students in university accommodation and into the homes across the UK from March 2008.

The Inuk platform can also be customised and delivered as a solution to other broadband providers and network operators, providing flexibility in TV, voice and converged entertainment services.

Marcus Liassides, CEO, Inuk, said: “Cable & Wireless has the unique capability to offer an all-national wholesale multicast platform, so for us, the deal was a no-brainer. It’s great news for our customers as it means we can deliver triple-play services into the home and it's great news for us as we can expand the choice of services that we're able to offer in the future.”

Jim Marsh, CEO, Cable & Wireless Europe, Asia & US, commented: “This is another great wholesale partnership deal for us and I’m delighted that we’ve been able to create the UK’s most compelling IPTV platform for Inuk. We will concentrate on providing an excellent customer service to Inuk and our other wholesale broadband customers - whilst they focus on delivering a range of triple-play services to our collective consumers.”

Liassides continued: “We’re delighted to have Cable & Wireless as our wholesale partner. The fact that we’ll be able to offer our customers the UK’s first truly converged IPTV, VoIP and broadband service is a major achievement and testimony to the way our two teams have worked together.”