3G News ASIA / Europe : Nextreaming Corporation, a leader in mobile multimedia solutions for mobile operators, handset manufacturers and content providers, announced today that Bouygues Telecom has selected Nextreaming as its preferred encoder for its i-mode partners.

The agreement enables the French mobile operator’s content and application partners, including Europe's largest mobile content provider 123 Multimedia, to produce high quality encoded video content for its recently launched i-mode video service.

Europe's largest mobile content provider 123 Multimedia is the first i-mode partner to use the Nextreaming solution with Bouygues Telecom. Part of Index Corporation, a global provider of mobile and media services, 123 Multimedia has used the solution to encode its multimedia services for i-mode. The content is available now on Bouygues Telecom’s i-mode service and can be enjoyed by the operator’s 800,000 users.

“Using Nextreaming technology has allowed 123 Multimedia to quickly and easily encode our 123Funclips video clip content for Bouygues Telecom i-mode subscribers,” said Bertrand Perez, chief technology officer of 123 Multimedia. “123Funclips is one of Bouygues Telecom’s most popular i-mode services, featuring a variety of high quality downloadable video clips and animations from film and TV.”

"The high quality encoding platform represents another important step towards mass usage of our i-mode enabled mobile multimedia services," says Cedric Nicolas, i-mode expertise and roadmap manager from Bouygues Telecom. "We have adopted an approach that is particularly open to third-party content and applications; encouraging our partners to embrace our i-mode offering. Our decision to recommend the Nextreaming encoder will contribute to the successful launch of added-value video download services for our customers."

"Bouygues Telecom’s decision to recommend our encoding platform is testament to the effectiveness of Nextreaming solution," said Dr Il-TAEK LIM, chief executive officer of Nextreaming. "We believe that to ensure mass usage of video on mobile devices, it is critical that 3G operators provide the highest quality video content possible for consumers. Ensuring video content is sufficiently protected is also essential in order to encourage media owners to release their most valuable and engaging video footage across mobile networks.”

Nextreaming’s services are recommended for content providers and encoding service firms who need to quickly and effortlessly create large amounts of high quality 3GPP or MPEG multimedia content with forward lock content protection. With its advanced features such as pre-processing, double pass encoding and batch job functionality, Nextreaming’s solutions gives these partners the power to create videos and their multimedia content.