Bell Canada's Games, C&W's Moves

Bell Canada signs a deal to provide games on demand and Cable & Wireless expands its IP network in Canada with help from Telus.

by Roy Mark of www.internetnews.com [December 4, 2001]

Extent Technologies has signed an agreement with Bell Canada, the country's largest Internet communications provider, to help deliver Gamesmania, a subscription-based games-on-demand service to Bell Canada customers. The subscription service offers customers pay-as-you-play access to a wide range of PC-based games. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Exent's EXEtender software-on-demand technology delivers any executable software over the Web or an enterprise network for licensed users. Rather than downloading software as files that must be installed locally on the PC desktop, EXEtender allows Bell Canada to host the games software on its network, delivering streamed software that resides in memory on the subscriber's desktop PCs.

Bethesda, Md.-based Extent's major share holders include New Enterprise Associates (NEA), America Online, Inc., Comcast Corp., Temasek Holdings of Singapore, Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel), Concord Venture Capital, and Bezeq (Israel's ILEC).

Bell Canada provides connectivity to residential and business customers through wired and wireless voice and data communications, high speed and wireless Internet access, IP-broadband services, e-business solutions, local and long distance phone and directory services. Bell Canada is owned by BCE Inc of Montreal (80 percent) and by SBC Communications Inc. of San Antonio, Tex. (20 percent).

Cable & Wireless
In other news, Cable & Wireless made a move north of the border.

Cable & Wireless, the London-based telecommunications group that maintains its U.S. headquarters in Vienna, Va., is expanding its operations into Canada through a deal with Toronto-based Telus. Under the terms of the agreement, Telus becomes the exclusive reseller for Cable & Wireless' global.net service in Canada.

To provide this service, Cable & Wireless has extended its global IP network into Canada with the opening of a new network node in Toronto. The new Toronto node is connected into the U.S. via fully redundant links to Chicago and New York. The cross-border transmission links are supplied by Telus.

Through Cable & Wireless' single autonomous system (AS) network design, Internet traffic passes across a single network, rather than "hopping" across a number of regional networks, as it would with other networks.

Cable & Wireless had revenue of $11 billion last year and customers in 70 countries. The company's focus for future growth is on IP and data services and solutions for business customers. Cable & Wireless is developing advanced IP networks and value-added services in the U.S., Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

Telus provides a full range of telecommunications products and services that connect Canadians to the world. The company is the leading service provider in Western Canada and provides data, Internet Protocol, voice and wireless services to central and eastern Canada.

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