Questions About the Deutsche Telekom IPTV Developer Award

Do You Still Have Any Questions? Here Are Our Answers.

What is the Deutsche Telekom Interactive TV Award? What does it aim to achieve? Who can take part? What are the terms and conditions? And what form will the competition take in detail? Here are the answers to questions about the developers’ competition of the year. If you have any further questions, please use the contact form.

What is the Deutsche Telekom Interactive TV Award?

The Deutsche Telekom Interactive TV Award is the opportunity of the year for creative IPTV developers to put their ideas into practice. Deutsche Telekom is inviting the international developer community to assist in shaping the television of the future in a unique competition.

As part of the competition participants are given an opportunity to develop new ideas and sustainable concepts in interactive TV, to have them evaluated (in specialist and market tests) and to gain experience of implementing them on one of Europe’s largest IPTV platforms.

Why is Deutsche Telekom launching the Deutsche Telekom Interactive TV Award?

Interactive television has enormous potential that Deutsche Telekom can only realise jointly with high-powered, creative developers. Since the market development of interactive TV has only just begun, the industry is still very much in its early days. Deutsche Telekom would like this competition to offer developers and companies an incentive to develop applications for interactive television.

Who can take part?

All individuals, groups of people, start-ups and small and medium-sized companies and institutions that share our enthusiasm about the opportunities interactive TV offers and relish the prospect of developing and implementing innovative ideas and creative concepts for the IPTV market are invited to take part.

Employees of Deutsche Telekom AG and of associated companies as defined in Section 15 of the German Companies Act (Aktiengesetz/AktG) may not, on grounds of equal opportunity, compete for the Deutsche Telekom Interactive TV Award.

What can they win?

The winners will receive a total of €1 million and a unique opportunity to develop their ideas to market readiness on one of the largest European IPTV platforms. Deutsche Telekom is making its own IPTV developer environment available, organising workshops and training sessions with Telekom specialists and providing participants with the requisite application developer kit free of charge (it is, of course, theirs to keep once the competition is over).

What form will the competition take in detail?

The competition will get off to an official start at the beginning of March and run for three rounds:

• First Round (preliminary round):  March 4 to April 4, 2008
  Participants can qualify to enter by submitting a written project proposal for the competition. An in-house panel of Deutsche Telekom AG experts will select from the entries ten to go through to the next round. Each of the ten will receive €50,000 in prize money.
• Second Round (intermediate round): beginning of April to late June/early July 2008
  The ten entries shortlisted in the preliminary round will develop a prototype using the Application Developer Kit and present it to the jury. The jury will select three finalists. The jury’s decision will be announced at the IFA Consumer Electronics Show in Berlin. The finalists will each receive a further €100,000.
• Third Round (finals): end of July to end of December 2008
  The three finalists will develop their applications on Deutsche Telekom’s IPTV platform (Single Server Instance) and then present it to the jury. The jury will choose the winner. The jury’s decision will be announced at the end of January 2009 on the occasion of Deutsche Telekom’s International Press Colloquium. The winner will receive a further €200,000.

Which ideas can win?

Deutsche Telekom will reward the participants who are best able to develop and implement innovative, creative and sustainable project ideas.

No restrictions are imposed on topics because participants are to enjoy the greatest possible leeway for project ideas of their own. The focus in the further development of IPTV could, however, include the following areas:

• Participation TV
  Applications that are directly linked to live shows. Users will have the opportunity to take part in live shows interactively and in real time via the TV platform’s feedback channel.
  Examples: quiz shows, votes or surveys.
• Communities / Personalisation
  Applications that support the creation and maintenance of personal and social networks. They may also contribute toward simplification and/or lead to an extra degree of individualisation of the television experience.
  Examples: multiplayer games, messaging, intelligent programme tips
• Interactive B2B / B2C Models
  Applications that are characterised by an underlying business model and open up new revenue potential for interactive TV.
  Examples: interactive shopping experiences, e-health, e-metering applications.

Who evaluates submissions?

Submissions will be evaluated by in-house and external experts in interactive television. After the first round an in-house panel of Deutsche Telekom AG employees who are experts in the field of interactive TV will evaluate the ideas and concepts submitted and shortlist ten entries for the next round. In the next two rounds a jury will assess the concepts.

The jury will consist of experts from different areas of society (probably the media industry, the university sector, journalists) and expert decision makers from Deutsche Telekom AG. This will ensure an objective and competent evaluation of the applications submitted. The selection process will be based at every stage in the proceedings on objective viewpoints determined by the objectives, criteria and leitmotifs of the competition.

How will submissions be judged?

To ensure a fair and objective evaluation of submissions the following criteria have been defined:

• Usability (ease of use, ability to be integrated into the existing interface)
• Customer benefit (unique selling propositions, special nature of the concept)
• Quality of the technical solution approach (scalability, compatibility with the existing IT architecture, efficient use of hardware resources)

Is there a product description for Entertain?

Yes. The product description for Entertain can be downloaded as soon as you have registered. In addition, more information about the product is available on our home page www.t-home.de/entertain (information just in German language available).

Are multiple entries allowed?

Yes, there are no restrictions on the number of entries that can be submitted by each participant. Each participant may only receive one award, however.

How do I enter?

Entrants must submit their concept outlines electronically to the website www.interactive-tv-award.com using the entry form provided on the website.

Documents must be submitted in landscape format on the basis of the following content structure:

• A brief description of your motivation and vision for the concept
• A brief personal or company presentation (competences, references, areas of activity, if applicable, number of employees, sales, form of company, etc.)
• Description of the concept proposal (business idea, use cases, business model, etc.)
• Presentation on the technical realisation (block diagram, basic technologies used, functions involved, resource requirements, scaling, etc.)
• Name a project contact and, if appropriate, a deputy, along with contact data.

Application documents must reach Deutsche Telekom AG in full and in a fit state for processing by April 4, 2008 at the latest. They will not be returned. Receipt of documents will be acknowledged in writing.