Under the deals, Ericsson has signed a new contract with the ABC to deliver live and file based captioning across its television network comprising ABC, ABC2, ABC3 and ABC News 24.

And, Ericsson and SBS are continuing an existing partnership with the extension of a captioning contract for an additional three years to provide both live and file based captions for SBS TV.

The ABC and SBS contracts follow Ericsson’s announcement in November of a multi-year news captioning contract with ANC, Australia's 24-hour multi-channel, multi-platform news service provider. As part of the contract, Ericsson provides captioning services for SKY NEWS-produced bulletins on Qantas flights.

Noel Leslie, SBS Chief Technology Officer, said SBS’ commitment to servicing diverse multicultural communities “is at the heart of SBS and this captioning agreement allows us to use the best available technology innovations to ensure all Australians can access SBS television”.

Thorsten Sauer, Head of Broadcast and Media Services, Ericsson, says: “We are very proud to be selected by both ABC and SBS to provide captioning services for their TV networks.

“We believe that television should be accessible to everyone and our ongoing investment in technology and innovation reflects our continued commitment to delivering the very highest levels of service and quality to both our customers and their audiences. Drawing on a blend of our expertise and technical innovation, our aim is to ensure that we deliver the high standards of captioning that audiences expect, particularly when it comes to higher accuracy, lower latency and the availability of captions on all platforms.”

According to Sauer 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.

Sauer said Ericsson has been providing captioning services for over 30 years and delivers over 230,000 hours of captions every year, more than 100,000 of which are live, and it is also the world's largest provider of TV audio description and sign-language translation.

Ericsson's real-time platform supports live captioning in various languages for broadcasters around the world by using speech-to-text, newsroom integration and rapid offline content preparation.

Sauer also said the enterprise-level, schedule-driven software platform, which was developed in-house, uses the “best possible speech recognition and stenography technologies to power Ericsson's live captioning services”.

“It allows multiple captioners to prepare and deliver real-time services for clients while maximising re-use of the caption data after it has been broadcast - for example, by helping to power content discovery and enrich archive search.”