Telia’s TV customers can sleep soundly during Beijing Olympics

– SVT service will be sending the Summer Games around the clock

Telia is the first TV provider in Sweden to offer its digital TV customers access to parts of SVT Play – direct to their TV screens and with full TV quality. Initially, news and sports broadcasts from SVT will be available 24 hours a day. This means that Telia’s TV customers will not need to lose sleep during the Beijing Olympics, but will be able to watch SVT’s broadcasts from the Summer Games whenever they want.

The traditional procedure of checking the TV schedule before watching TV at night has begun to meet some competition. TV viewing structured around scheduled programming is being challenged by services that make it possible to watch whatever we want, whenever we want – i.e. on demand services. According to a survey recently conducted by Telia, 12 percent of the Swedish population already uses video on demand, and almost 50 percent are interested in trying the service.

“It is becoming more and more evident that people want to control their own media consumption and watch TV when it suits them. We have seen a significant upswing in on demand services during the past year, and there are many indications that the trend will continue. This makes it even more exciting that we can now offer our customers the option of watching the Olympic Games from Beijing when it fits their schedule,” says Erik Hallberg, head of Broadband Services at TeliaSonera in Sweden.

Work to establish customer access to the new services will begin on August 5. When the Olympics start on August 8, all of Telia’s TV customers will be able to see the broadcasts whenever they want.

The agreement between SVT and TeliaSonera currently includes the Rapport, Aktuellt and regional news programs, the Sportnytt sports program and the Olympic broadcasts from Beijing. The agreement also includes an expressed objective and a long-term strategy for offering a wider selection of SVT’s comprehensive program library to Telia’s digital TV customers in the future.

In addition to SVT’s program library SVT Play, Telia already offers similar services from TV4, Canal+, Viasat, Disney Channel and Discovery.