Tiscali Embraces the Power of Peer-to-Peer Technology with RawFlow

Business Wire, Oct 16, 2006

DREIEICH, Germany & LONDON -- Tiscali Business, a leading European streaming service provider, has partnered with RawFlow, a leading provider of live peer-to-peer streaming technology. Together they plan to increase the scalability and quality of Tiscali's Media Delivery Network serving inter alia over 60 private radio stations.

A first project will be the radio station broadcasts that Tiscali hosts on its freestream initiative in Germany. The freestream initiative addresses private broadcast stations with streaming free-of-charge in exchange for advertising space on their media players. This model has become very popular with German radio stations and Internet users. Due to its popularity Tiscali is now broadcasting over 100 terabytes per month, and approached RawFlow to increase streaming capacity and quality without unreasonably increasing costs.

RawFlow's advanced peer-to-peer technology allows broadcasters to create a network that utilizes the unused 'upload' bandwidth capacity of viewers. This technology will enable Tiscali to increase its streaming volume and bitrates and hence end user experience without increasing costs in a linear way as it is the case with traditional technology, where more users mean more traffic and thereby automatically higher costs. RawFlow's ICD (Intelligent Content Distribution) technology will be installed in the Tiscali Data Center, enabling Tiscali to increase its capacity and quality of service in streaming while keeping bandwidth costs manageable.

Tiscali and RawFlow will jointly develop the freestream-model in combination with peer-to-peer streaming technology into a pan-European service. Especially radio stations interested in cost-effective and high-quality web casts as well as brand owners interested in positioning their brands in this rapidly growing, cross-media environment are seen as target group.

Mikkel Dissing, CEO of RawFlow, commented: "Peer-to-peer technology is entering the mainstream and is being seen as the solution for broadcasters who are witnessing the popularity of their online broadcast content sky rocket. The online advertising market is growing rapidly and has proven to be a stable and prosperous online business model. By partnering with Tiscali and entering the online advertising market we hope to establish a healthy revenue model which will support future exciting developments that we have in the pipeline."

Uwe Schnepf, Director New Media of Tiscali, commented: "Though peer-to-peer is often considered to be a threat to the classical business model of any streaming service provider, we consider it to be a great chance for some applications. In close cooperation with content owners such as the private and public broadcasters, we are committed to overcome the limitations of nowadays' web casts and keep control over streaming cost. By integrating peer-to-peer content delivery technologies in our services we can increase our overall delivery performance. By enhancing our quality of service, we can improve the end user's experience during web casts."

NOTES TO EDITORS:

About RawFlow

RawFlow is a leading provider of live peer-to-peer streaming technology that enables broadcasters, CDN's and webcasters to maximise the scalability and quality of their internet broadcasts without increasing risk or cost. RawFlow is an international company with expertise in working with broadcasters around the globe. By forging partnerships with experts in streaming media, RawFlow offers broadcasters and content owners anything from simple installations to complete end-to-end solutions to support streaming of audio and video. RawFlow increases steaming quality and capacity by using the spare upstream capacity in the network. It offers a secure digital media delivery solution that supports digital rights management. RawFlow was founded and managed by an experienced team of internet entrepreneurs in 2000. In 2005 RawFlow received financial backing by leading venture capital firm Benchmark. Further information can be found at www.rawflow.com.

About Tiscali Business

Tiscali Germany, belonging fully to Tiscali S.p.A in Cagliari, Italy, supplies private and business customers with services such as Internet, telephone and e-commerce. Tiscali also offers full Internet communication services (Connectivity, Hosting, Security and New Media). As a leading European Internet communication company in New Media and Streaming, Tiscali has over seven million active clients. Tiscali also has at disposal an own Backbone System with up to 2,5 Gbit/s and runs Germanys first TE[pounds sterling]V-certified Data Center. Further information can be found at www.tiscali-business.de.