Network of the World Pushes into Asia; NOW Service to Debut on Hong Kong TV This Week.

Business Editors

HONG KONG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 27, 2000

Pacific Century CyberWorks' Network of the World (NOW) continues its thrust into Asia with its August 28 Hong Kong Cable TV debut, the latest milestone in Asian distribution arrangements since it aired less than two months ago.

The converged global TV-web service was rolled out from its London studio June 30. Since then NOW has moved steadily in key target countries such as Australia, Japan and India to further distribute its ground-breaking combined entertainment and information package.

NOW Creative Director Michael Johnson said the 12 to 18 month global rollout process is right on schedule.

"This is a marathon, not a sprint," said Johnson, who oversees global operations from NOW's London studio. "Creating an entirely new medium is a process, not an event."

Hong Kong Cable has 480,000 subscribers and is operated by Hong Kong Cable Television Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of i-Cable Communications Ltd.

In Australia, the August 24 PCCW-Telstra Corporation agreement on global connectivity services, mobility communications and Internet data centers paves the way for the continent's NOW distribution.

NOW is to be accessed initially via a button prominently displayed on the "telstra.com" home page. Telstra has also agreed to distribute NOW via the company's HFC, xDSL, and satellite high-speed Internet services.

Telstra currently has about 2.5 million HFC homes passed and has provisioned more than 200 exchanges with xDSL (digital subscriber lines) capability. It intends to provide access to broadband services to 90 percent of the Australian population within 24 months.

The Telstra deal was preceded by a string of NOW-related moves from Japan, most significantly, a US$250 million deal announced August 10 to buy a majority stake in Jaleco Ltd., a listed video-game software producer.

Following the Jaleco announcement, PCCW said August 22 it will work with Sony PCL Inc. to build a US$40 million NOW studio in Tokyo, aiming to roll out a Japanese-language service by mid-2001. A NOW content-related deal was announced last week with Weathernews Inc., and more Japan announcements are expected soon.

The Australian and Japanese announcements coincided with last week's statement from New Delhi, stating that a NOW TV channel and Internet services are scheduled to be up and running in India in the next month.

"This is just the beginning," said Pacific Century CyberWorks Chairman and Chief Executive Richard Li. "NOW is about building relationships with a global audience. We are doing this country by country, step by step."

About NOW

NOW merges the experience of watching TV and surfing the Internet into a single experience, featuring fresh television programming and in-depth web content synchronized to each other.

At www.NOW.com, TV viewers and Internet users converge to become "viewsers," who watch TV while also cruising the website for related video clips, graphics, animation, text and web links. NOW's "vortals" cover music, the entertainment industry, sports, online games and the environment. They are as follows:

mp3TV

Since its launch mp3TV has featured 160 new bands in its 10 x 10 show - all unsigned, all as good as the real thing, and all with Web presence. mp3TV had 600 inquiries to participate on the show and hand picked 160 of those from all corners of the world, including Japan, Russia, Norway, Mexico, the U.S., and Canada.

September sees the launch of "Battle of the Bands," in which two music groups battle for fame and fortune during a 30-second pitch - throwing themselves on the mercy of the viewsers, who determine the winner.

e-mage

NOW is developing a powerful arts profile, initially based around the movie-making equivalent of MP3 output - new film-makers using 10-minute "shorts" as a platform for their talents. e-mage also attends all of the most influential events on the movie calendar - film festivals in Soho, Edinburgh, Venice and Cannes.

Hollywood Stock Exchange (a virtual exchange where "viewsers" register and trade shares in celebrities and movies) has a NET-based pool of 700,000 traders, mainly in the US. e-mage has taken that Web content and turned it into a TV show.

sports

The NOW CHALLENGE reaches final stages. Fifty-nine-year-old grandmother Jennifer Murray is attempting to become the first-ever woman to fly solo around the world in a helicopter while 49-year-old Colin Bodill is attempting to become the first person to circumnavigate the world in a tiny microlight aircraft. The team is now on its return leg of its journey some 86 days into their challenge.

NOW has received just under 1000 emails from well-wishers the world over during the Challenge.

gamer

A 30-strong team at NOW headquarters is producing six half-hour shows and more than 20 original vortal pages each week. Next out of the blocks will be two online games created in collaboration with the American innovators 3D GROOVE, designers of one of the Internet's most popular games ever - Real Pool. NOW RACER is a spectacular fast-moving race game featuring highly manoeuvrable streamlined space-racers powering their way round a futuristic track. In another racing game, GENESIS RUN, a NOW RACER suddenly takes on a dangerously combative edge, as the viewser is forced to battle against marauding opponents on a hazard-littered track.

mother-ship

This vortal focuses on extreme weather events, natural phenomena, and the latest developments in space. Most recently, Mother-ship's Richard Wiese was the sole broadcaster on site during the eruptions of two of the most dangerous and active volcanoes in the world, namely Popocatepeti in Mexico City and Soufriere Hills in Montserrat. His exclusive reports brought previously unseen material to the world.

Mother-ship, in its drive to become the center for experts in the field, has signed on a new consultancy, Danger Man, from University College London - which has an unparallel range of experts across earthquakes, deep space, volcanoes, deep seas.

About Pacific Century CyberWorks (PCCW)

Pacific Century CyberWorks is the Hong Kong-listed technology flagship of the Pacific Century Group. PCCW is the largest Internet company in Asia, by market capitalisation.

PCCW is developing a full spectrum of broadband Internet capabilities, and is aiming to become a premier provider of telecommunications, digital technology and new media services. With the August 2000 PCCW-Cable & Wireless HKT merger, PCCW has developed an innovative 8 X 3 business model that runs eight business units within three operating sectors:

-- Telecommunications Services - Principally comprising

telecommunications and other value-added services based on the

Company's fibre-optic network in Hong Kong.

-- Global Communications Services - Mobility and global

connectivity services o Net Enterprises - NOW, B2B business

services, Data Center services and CyberWorks Ventures, which

takes strategic positions in synergistic core businesses.