Telewest Broadband

Telewest consolidated a range of data, voice, TV, and video services over a single network quickly, cost-effectively, and with tremendous scalability. It chose the Cisco 7609 routing platform.

Telewest is one of the largest broadband communications and media groups in the United Kingdom, providing multichannel television, telephone, and Internet services to 1.8 million residential customers in England and Scotland. While Telewest Business supplies broadband services to consumer, business, and public-sector markets, its content division, Flextech, is the BBC's partner in UKTV. Together they are the largest supplier of basic channels to the UK pay-TV market with a portfolio that combines wholly owned and managed channels, including ten joint venture channels with the BBC.

One of the company's strategic goals was to launch Teleport, a TV-on-demand (TVoD) service for customers by 2006, which would also include on-demand programming from the BBC and other television content providers. Traditionally, voice, video, business data services, and broadband Internet access services have been delivered over separate networks. The new TV-on-demand services would normally have required Telewest to build a dedicated transport network. However, as demand for IP-based services and broadband subscription rates are growing rapidly, Telewest undertook a reevaluation of its network in light of delivering future capabilities.

"The TV-on-demand service Teleport is bandwidth intensive and required a significant upgrade to our network distribution and edge layers", explained Joe Foster, director of network engineering and technical strategy for Telewest. "In planning for this service, we realized that by consolidating various networks over a single platform and upgrading our network edge we could deliver the Teleport service and several other important projects more cost-effectively than if we had built a dedicated TVoD network."

Specifically, Telewest wanted to enable public telephone network users and existing data customers to migrate easily to the new IP-based services, while enjoying the same reliable service levels they were accustomed to. Business customers wanted higher-bandwidth Ethernet and IP virtual private network (VPN) services with quality of service (QoS) functionality. The company also wanted to assure future scalability and simplify network management by unifying its infrastructure on a single edge routing platform.

Teleport Movies

Teleport Movies - or "Filmflex" - in 2006 offered a library of around 300 of the latest movies. Movies cost between £2 and £3.50 per movie for unlimited viewing for 24 hours. Users can start watching their film exactly when it suits them and can pause, rewind and fast forward just like a DVD.

Teleport TV

Teleport TV offered access to a wide range of popular TV series, documentaries, comedy and kids' programmes. Watch a whole series in one go or find something that children will want to watch. As with all Teleport programmes users can pause, rewind and fast forward. Teleport TV was available at no extra cost with the "Supreme package" and customers on the Starter and Essential packages could subscribe for an additional £5 per month.

Teleport Replay

Teleport Replay was available to all Digital TV customers and featured popular TV programmes shown on over the past 7 days so users can watch all their favourite programmes at a time that suits them. Users will also be able to pause, rewind and fast forward.

Teleport Music

Teleport Music was a service that gave users access to a library of music content. In 2006 there were over 500 music videos to choose from as well as various concerts and artist biographies. Music videos cost 40p each and both concerts and artist biographies cost £1.50 each, all of which have unlimited viewing during the 24-hour rental period.