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Europe Online and Datacargo Sign Cooperation Agreement for Video on Demand Services on Set-Top Boxes

Luxembourg, 17 February 2003

Europe Online Investments S.A. in Luxembourg, owner of the world's first and largest broadband Internet satellite services, and Datacargo, manufacturer of set-top box software, today announced that they have signed a cooperation agreement. Under the terms of this agreement, Europe Online will provide video-on-demand services for set-top boxes equiped with Datacargo´s Visiongate software. As a strategic partner of Fujitsu Siemens, Datacargo relies on the “Activy” series of set-top boxes. The end user application is currently being marketed on the German market and will soon be offered in other European countries such as France, Italy, Spain, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

The cooperation between Europe Online and Datacargo GmbH of Germany will also cover a number of B2B projects, as both companies expect a growing market for the satellite-based distribution of multimedia content and data to closed user groups and business customers (Business TV, E-learning, niche programmes).

Both parties are also desiring to extend and develop their geographic market and reach, in particular but not limited to continental Europe and the U.K. As such, BT Broadcast will make available satellite capacity and up-linking/infrastructure services to the joint BT Broadcast/Europe Online market. Europe Online has today almost 60,000 registered users for their broadband satellite service and BT Broadcast Services has one of the largest commercial storage networks in the world, serving numerous clients around the world. BT is a shareholder of Eutelsat and Intelsat and has satellite capacity on the ASTRA satellite system at 19.2 degrees East as well. Europe Online will bring its entire interactive, digital broadband converged network technology, content aggregation, intellectual property, marketing, content convergence platform, and software and hardware development to the common goal.

In the past months, Europe Online succeeded in closing distribution agreements with major companies such as British Telecom, Kabel Deutschland, Eutelsat and SES Astra. Datacargo has developed a scalable, simple user interface allowing for flexible use of the set-top box by both private end-users and business users. The combination of Europe Online´s Video-on-Demand service and Datacargo´s user interface provides end users with a complete virtual video archive right in their living rooms. Key features of this new service are the immediate availability of the requested movies and their high quality.

For more information, please contact:

Europe Online Investments S.A. Data Cargo GmbH
Candace Johnson Mr Thomas Broschard
Tel. +352 719 785 1 Tel: +49.62.24.82.88.16
E-Mail: cj@europeonline.net E-Mail: broschard@datacargo.de


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