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Press Release -- February 6th, 2014
Source: Colt Group
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The digital heart of Berlinale beats in Colt’s data centre

Colt is taking part in a technological premiere at this year´s International Berlin Film Festival, the 64th Berlinale, running February 6 – 16th, which, for the first time will make use of digitalised films across the entire event. With 300,000 tickets sold, this is the largest public film festival in the world and includes 2,500 screenings of 1,100 films in 25 venues during the 10-day event. For the first time this year, all 16 permanent festival venues of the Berlinale with a total of 51 halls are connected to the Colt network. Special event cinemas like „Berlinale goes district“ and the Berlin philharmonic concert hall are not a part of the network.

Colt´s data centre and high-performance network will form the “digital heart” of the Berlinale festival, enabling the storage and consistent and easy distribution of film data to all participating venues. Berlinale are able to provide an excellent festival experience for the international audiences gathering in Berlin, by benefiting from Colt’s high-quality services and consistent quality management and monitoring.

This is the sixth consecutive year that Colt is supporting the film festival with its leading network, and this year its IT and data centre services are also being provided. This means that Colt will be the official digital cinema partner for Berlinale. Colt has expanded its high performance network across Berlin to ensure highly reliable connectivity to the 16 permanent festival venues, ensuring all visitors will receive a consistent experience. A connection to the restored Zoopalast is the latest addition to Colt’s network across the German city. Behind the scenes, Colt’s Optimum Services – ranging from broadcast quality network services for data transmission to scalable storage services and Internet access – will ensure that the spotlight remains on the stars of the show.

To ensure the festival’s success, year after year, Colt works in close partnership with Berlinale, both in the planning phases, essential to scale the infrastructure to suit the specific high-performance needs of the festival every year, as well as during the festival itself. Colt technicians will also be on call around the clock and on-site at all Berlinale events during the ten days of the festival.

“Digitalisation is an enormous technical and logistical challenge for the film industry. For Berlinale the distribution of digitalised films – with the associated volume of data – is a major task,” says festival director Dieter Kosslick. “We are delighted to have found the right partner to help us overcome this challenge. Colt has demonstrated the deep expertise we need from a digital partner and provided Berlinale with the high performance, reliable infrastructure and services required to make this film festival a success. We are confident that together we will continue to delight film fans in Berlin.”

“The project is a clear example of how Colt delivers the best possible customer experience. Over the course of the past six years, we have accompanied and supported the festival in its transition to digital cinema, making it easier for Berlinale to secure the enjoyment of the global audiences. What began with a connection for Internet access and video services has now developed into a trusted partnership, with Colt now at the digital heart of one of the world’s most exciting film festivals,” says Jürgen Hernichel, Executive Vice President at Colt.

Notes to Editor

Highlights of the “digital heart” supporting the Berlinale festival:

  • Colt is providing the festival with a fibre network with an overall length of 200 kilometres.
  • 400 terabytes of data, the equivalent to 34,952,534 MP3 songs of 5 min length will be transferred over the network during the festival. These are 2.912,711 hours, a period of time in which the opening film of this year´s festival, ”The Grand Budapest Hotel”, could be shown 1,747,627 times.
  • Colt’s network will also be used to broadcast the opening gala and award ceremony live to venues like the Zoopalast and Cinemaxx in Berlin.
  • All films, whether they arrive in tape or digital format, are converted to a uniform digital format prior to the festival and then stored at the data centre, where 400 terabytes of storage capacity is available.

About Colt

Colt is the information delivery platform, enabling its customers to deliver, share, process and store their vital business information. An established leader in delivering integrated computing and network services to major organisations, midsized businesses and wholesale customers. Colt operates in 22 European countries and the US with a 46,000km European network and transatlantic network capacity. Colt has metropolitan area networks in 41 major European cities with direct fibre connections into 19,800 buildings and 20 carrier neutral Colt data centres.

In 2010, the Colt Data Centre Services business was launched to deliver innovative high quality data centre solutions at a Colt or customer site. Our innovative data centres are rapid to deploy, flexible and highly efficient.

In addition to its direct sales capability, Colt has four indirect channels to market; Agent, Franchise, Distributor and Wholesale which includes Carriers, Service Providers, VARs and Voice Resellers.

Colt is listed on the London Stock Exchange (COLT).

Press Contacts

Colt
Paula Muezerie
DDI: +44 (0) 20 7947 1035
Mobile: +44 (0) 785 5301 078
Email: paula.muezerie@colt.net

Octopus
Katie Potts
DDI: +44 (0)8453 700 655
Mobile: +44 (0)7710 977 249
Email: Katie@weareoctopusgroup.net

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