Telenor to manage Volvo Ocean Race's homepage

The Volvo Ocean Race (VOR) starts in September 2001 and finishes in July 2002. In periods, VOR's homepage is most likely to be among the most highly visited websites in the world. Heavy traffic is expected during the first and last stages of the race. Nextra has therefore designed the website to be able to handle more than 120 million hits per day.

Nextra will both manage VOR's web pages and provide capacity for the delivery of live images (so called streaming) from the vessels, which audiences all over the world will be able to view via their PCs.

"We are very satisfied with the agreement with VOR, which we see as a confirmation that Nextra is among the leading suppliers of hosting and streaming services," said Diego Mackee, head of sales and marketing at Nextra AS. "We have delivered equivalent video services to the 'Big Brother' TV series, and the agreement demonstrates that we have the capacity and the competence to deliver some of the market's most advanced solutions," said Mackee.

The contract is expected to be worth approximately USD one million.


About Nextra AS
Nextra AS is a part of the newly established business area Telenor Business Solutions, which aims to be a leading supplier of communication and application services to the European business market. The business area will offer Norwegian companies a wide spectrum of telecom and data services, and will at the same time offer selected European business markets advanced communication services and software based on IP and ASP technology.