• Joint service agreement between BEI and Arqiva's Satellite Media Solutions division
• Alternative broadcast switching hub for London
• User control, cost-savings and fixed rates for HD and SD digital video

Washington, DC:  Beers Enterprises Inc (BEI) and Arqiva's Satellite Media Solutions division have today announced an agreement to join forces in launching ‘The London Switch', which is expected to commence operations in July 2008.

The London Switch has been jointly established to provide the UK industry with the first HD-SD capable video switching service featuring convenient customer control.  The service will provide a cost-saving alternative for local fibre circuits and unlimited switching at fixed rates. Both parties will implement an extension of BEI's revolutionary Inter City On Demand (ICOD®) video transmission service providing digital capacity between the UK and the US. The ICOD service links The Switch local community routers and offers customer controlled inter-city, end-to-end video transmission.

Scott Beers, Chairman and CEO of BEI, said: "We are excited about expanding The Switch to London and joining forces with Arqiva.  London has consistently been the most requested city by our existing customers for our next point of presence.  It's a natural progression as The Switch expands internationally.  Customers now will be able to execute local HD and SD signal switches and international transmissions in seconds to anyone in our Switch community."

Nick Thompson, managing director of Arqiva's Satellite Media Solutions division, added:
"This is an exciting growth period for Arqiva and The London Switch continues our expansion into new media markets.  This development has come about in recognition of a growing demand and need from our customers.  It clearly demonstrates our intent to introduce value-add services in alignment with our customers' requirements and their own growth ambitions."

Under the terms of the agreement, The London Switch will be located at Arqiva's central London hub in Newman Street and customers will have local 24/7 support from the Arqiva operations centre, as well as The Switch's network operations centre located in New York City.  This will be BEI's first international location in their expanding network which also includes switches in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Washington DC.

Customers of The London Switch will utilise the existing proprietary control system currently used by all US customers to seamlessly control their ports.  Current users of The Switch are accustomed to controlling their ports in their home city as well as The Switch's additional US locations.  BEI currently offers ICOD transmission service in 8, 20 and 270 Mbps capacity.

Arqiva is a well-established UK-based service provider.  The company provides much of the infrastructure behind television, radio and wireless communications in the UK and has a growing presence in Ireland, mainland Europe and the US.  Arqiva was awarded World Teleport Operator of the Year in 2007 by the World Teleport Association.  The company now has an inventory of over 100 uplinks at ten international satellite teleports providing access to over 60 satellites worldwide.

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