MEDIA BROADCAST brings Mobile TV to Austria together with ORS.

Bonn/Vienna, April 7, 2008

The international broadcast service provider MEDIA BROADCAST, holder of the Austrian DVB-H license, and Österreichische Rundfunksender GmbH (ORS), service companies in the area or analog and digital broadcast transmissions, concluded an important agreement today in Vienna for the prompt implementation of mobile TV. The core of the agreement is the cooperation of both media service providers in the development and operation of the nationwide DVB-H broadcasting network. The objective is to supply all EURO 2008™ venues from the very beginning. This will allow the majority of the Austrian population to receive 15 domestic and international TV programs and four Austrian radio programs in digital quality.

"We want to make Austria into a leading mobile TV market in Europe. The prerequisites for this are ideal and we have found another competent Austrian partner in ORS to help us achieve this goal," said Dr. Bertold Heil, manager of international DVB-H projects at MEDIA BROADCAST. "We assume that this will place an offer on the market that is an indispensable complement to the service portfolios of all Austrian mobile network operators. 

"ORS has an existing infrastructure and expertise from the DVB-T rollout and the conducted DVB-H trial and is therefore the ideal partner for MEDIA BROADCAST for developing a network in the given time. This will strengthen Austria as a media center and secure an important added-value share for Austria," says Michael Wagenhofer, commercial manager of ORS.

The agreement governs the uses of the ORS broadcasting and network infrastructure for the network development and transmission of program signals.

The schedule foresees the start of DVB-H at the kick-off of EURO 2008™ in the European Championship (EURO 2008™) host cities of Vienna, Salzburg, Innsbruck and Klagenfurt. Dr. Bertold Heil: "The implementation time until EURO 2008™ is extremely short. MEDIA BROADCAST and its partners bundle resources and know-how in order to attain this ambitious goal."

About DVB-H
DVB-H stands for Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld, a system that broadcasts TV programs to portable and mobile receivers with small screens. The standard is based on DVB-T technology and is optimally suited for mobile end devices due to a low data rate, increased error protection and energy-saving technology. In addition to TV programs, the system can also broadcast radio programs and interactive services to mobile devices. Video signals are encoded using MPEG-4/AVC and the audio signals are encoded with MPEG-4/AAC. Each program has a data rate of up to 400 kilobits per second, enough to allow television programs to be broadcast on small displays at extremely high quality.

009/2008

About the Austrian Broadcasting Services (ORS GmbH & Co KG)
The Austrian Broadcasting Services (ORS GmbH & Co KG) is among others responsible for setup, operation and maintenance of technical DVB-T infrastructure in Austria. The company derived from the ORF Broadcasting Technology and was founded in the beginning of 2005. Its shareholders are ORF (60%) and Medicur Sendeanlagen GmbH - a member of the Raiffeisen-Group (40%). As the Austrian leading service provider for analogue and digital broadcast technology, ORS operates a spacious station network of around 500 stations. Furthermore ORS is a technical service operator for digital satellite transmission in Europe. Among its customers are well-known TV and radio program operators as ORF, ATV, Puls 4, Ö1, Ö3 and mobile network operators like mobilkom austria, ONE and telering or Energy operators as EVN.

Contact:
ORS Head of Sales, Marketing & Communications Michael Weber
Phone: +43 1 870 40 12942
Mobile: +43 664 6278906
Email: michael.weber@ors.at