Etnoteam Technology Driving BT’s Universal Portal

[MILAN]British Telecommunications has selected Italian Internet and
Telecommunications solutions provider, Etnoteam, for the continued
development of its universal, free Internet portal, Infinito, according to
an announcement made in Milan.

“The Etnoteam Group has been fundamental to our success from the very
beginning,” said Paul Minihan, general manager of Infinito, “making an
important contribution to the development of the Infinito Universal Portal,
the first multi-access portal in Italy. I am sure that Etnoteam will
continue to play a central role in the development of BTs future service in
Italy.”

Infinito (www.infinito.it) is the free Internet access service BT offers to
customers. Launched in December 1999, Infinito today has over 700,000
registered users. In October of that same year it became the first universal
portal in Italy, permitting registered users to access its contents, to send
and received information from both fixed and mobile terminals. The mobile
Internet services are supplied with the support of Genie (by British
Telecom), the leading operator in this sector in Europe.

Thanks to the multi-channel structure, versions of the site are available
for Windows CE, Palm and mobile terminals via WAP and SMS. The service
offered by Infinito follows the evolution of the new devices and permits one
to have a dialogue with a group of mobile users interested in taking
advantage of rich and wide-ranging net surfing experiences.

“The creation of a universal portal for British Telecom,” explained Ornella
Fouillouze, Etnoteams general director telecommunications and media,
“represents an accomplished challenge for Etnoteam which, thanks to its
experience, is capable of covering the entire Internet value chain.
Furthermore, it is proof that the market sees wireless as one of the
fundamental steps in the spread of interactive multimedia at a mass level.”

The portal is currently housed at I.Net, the premier ISP for Italian
business users, a company partly owned by Etnoteam. The management and
monitoring of the Internet applications are entrusted to Etnoteam.com, an
Etnoteam Group company focused on e-Sourcing.