RTE Launches New Aertel Mobile Service

RTE - Ireland's national broadcaster, has successfully launched the new version of its mobile information platform, Aertel Mobile, supported by SysMedia's Plasma Gold cross-platform content management technology.
The Aertel Mobile is the latest example of an ongoing digital multiplatform extension by RTE of its original teletext services and it will ultimately replace the previous award-winning WAP-based mobile service – which was also powered by SysMedia technology. Key to this expansion strategy is the need to avoid duplicating any editorial effort. Equally important is the ease with which advertising is supported across the multiple platforms.
The new mobile service has been specifically designed to display on the widest possible number of phones, including the iPhone and other smartphones. SysMedia achieved this by developing support for the industry-wide mobile handset database – the Mobile Device Atlas database – which allows the RTE system to determine the capabilities of the user's particular phone and deliver the output in the correct format.
The content is largely repurposed from Aertel's analogue and digital teletext services: 500 pages of up-to-the-minute news, sport, financial and other popular listings, approximately 70 per cent of which is updated automatically. This will enable existing content and advertising to be leveraged to broaden reach without extra editorial effort.
Emer Conlon, IT Project Manager at RTE, said: "Plasma Gold's automated repurposing of content, using a template model, is vital as we rollout these additional services. In order to increase revenue we need to extend access to the information we have and increase the reach of our advertising – different platforms, same payload."
The new mobile service retains one familiar aspect of its teletext and WAP counterparts – page numbers. Conlon concluded: "According to our statistics, accessing information via page numbers is very popular. People want to go directly to pages; they like the familiarity because they know those numbers from using teletext. These most popular pages are of course also ideal advertising spots."
(BMcN/CD)