Ericsson has announced an exclusive multi-year access services contract with the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives in New Zealand. The contract will see Ericsson remotely deliver live captioning services for the Parliament TV broadcasts of the sittings of the New Zealand House of Representatives. The new captioning service will be available on Parliament TV for the first time from August.
David Wilson, clerk of the House of Representatives, says: "One in nine people in New Zealand uses captions when watching TV content. Live captioning will enable more people in our communities to be informed about and involved in the work of their Parliament."
Thorsten Sauer, head of Broadcast and Media Services, Ericsson, says: "We believe that content should be accessible by everyone, especially content that is integral to shaping a country's future and the lives of its citizens."
In March, Ericsson announced multi-year captioning contracts with Australian public service broadcasters ABC and SBS. In November, Ericsson also announced a multi-year news captioning contract with ANC, Australia's leading 24-hour multi-channel, multi-platform news service provider.
Ericsson's closed captioning business is one of the largest in the world, with hubs in Australia, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and the US. Ericsson has been providing captioning services for over 30 years and delivers 230,000 hours of captions every year, 100,000 of which are live. It is also the world's largest provider of TV audio description and sign-language translation.