ICE and Pizza Hut launch first Australian t-commerce application

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The folks at ICE Interactive Limited sent in this news announcement:

ICE and Pizza Hut launch first Australian t-commerce application

SYDNEY- November 2, 2000. ICE Interactive Limited (ICE) and Pizza Hut today launched the first television commerce (t-commerce) application in Australia - an interactive pizza ordering system that allows viewers to order pizzas through their television sets. This system is a component of ICE's interactive television (iTV) pilot in Orange, NSW. ICE is conducting the pilot with WIN Television as its lead broadcast partner.

Pizza Hut commissioned ICE to design and build the pizza ordering application, which is hosted on ICE's iTV application platform. ICE built a TV-friendly online version of Pizza Hut's delivery and take away menu using open internet standards. This enabled Pizza Hut to leverage existing content and reduce the costs involved in launching the service.

"This is the first true example of t-commerce in Australia," said Carl Braden, Managing Director of ICE Interactive. " Hundreds of Orange residents will now be able to order pizzas and other Pizza Hut menu items while watching TV."

"Viewers simply click on the Pizza Hut icon on their TV screen with their remote control. And since they can still see and hear the TV program while they're making their pizza selections, they don't miss any of the action on their favorite TV shows."

"Connected interactive television (which requires a return path to the service provider) creates the electronic channel to the home, bringing marketers closer to the heart of home-based purchase decisions. As with electronic commerce, t-commerce reduces transaction costs for marketers. ICE's t-commerce applications are built to maximise these transaction savings for service providers", he added.

"This is a breakthrough for many people who don't have a PC or fear the complexity of computer-based electronic commerce", said Mr Greg Creed, Pizza Hut's Chief Marketing Officer. "T-commerce is simple and convenient, and has a huge potential to narrow the gap between consumer intent and consumer action. For many people pizza is an impulse purchase," he added.

Forrester Research predicts that t-commerce will overshadow e-commerce within a few years with revenues of $US29 billion by 2004. These revenues will include $US16.6 billion in advertising, $US10 billion in commerce and $US2.4 billion in subscription revenues.

ICE has installed more than a hundred interactive set-top boxes in randomly selected households in and around Orange as part of a three month pilot of iTV under the "MyiTV" brand. The pilot was originally meant to finish at the end of November but has been extended to January 31st 2001 to maximise the opportunity for partners such as WIN Television and Pizza Hut to participate in Australia's first trial of two way, 'connected' iTV.

The Pizza Hut application complements the on-demand entertainment, news, sport, finance and email services that MyiTV trial participants have been enjoying since August.

About ICE Interactive:
ICE Interactive Limited (www.iceinteractive.com.au) was founded by Oracle Corporation in February 2000. ICE has a blue chip share register including Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq: ORCL) and Liberate Technologies (Nasdaq: LBRT). Burdekin Pacific Limited (ASX: BKS) has provided local venture capital funding.

ICE's business is the development and commercialisation of iTV application infrastructure and iTV applications ICE's iTV applications are designed to work across a range of technologies to provide iTV service providers with a wide choice of underlying technologies. ICE also provides the consulting services to integrate ICE's iTVapplications with applications from a variety of software vendors. ICE is a reseller of Liberate Technology in the Asia Pacific region and Oracle software in Australia and New Zealand.

For further information or photography contact:

Marie Kelly
GM Marketing and Corporate Communications ICE Interactive
02 9925 5415
0404 846 380
mkelly@iceinteractive.com.au

Monica Vardabasso
Primary Communication
9212 3888
0414 472 012
mvardabasso@primary-pr.com

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