BBC News has purchased a digital media management system designed to improve the speed at which its global bureaux and worldwide network of journalists can share breaking news stories.

Using BBC News' existing infrastructure the Signiant Digital Media Distribution Management Suite (DMDMS) will securely move and distribute content throughout the BBC's 'ecosystem' and to its outlets around the world.

The new set-up will be ready for operation in March 2008.

The web-based content collection component will be handled by the Media Exchange within DMDMS. This will ensure a consistent and robust transfer experience, whether sending and receiving content via the corporation's intranet, the public internet or satellite link.

The DMDMS will also allow the BBC News team to prioritise stories and allocate bandwidth according to size and importance.

A dashboard-style graphical user interface provides users with a comprehensive view of all data movement throughout the digital media distribution system. Graphical tools allow users to adjust how the global network capacity is used. Because not all digital media transfers are created equally, users can dynamically change network bandwidth allocation to meet time to air priorities and deadlines.

Signiant Europe managing director David Nortier said, “In an increasingly competitive environment, news broadcasters need to receive breaking stories fast.

"It is imperative for BBC News to have a reliable content delivery system so that it can be first to receive the news from its reporters or ‘citizen journalists', whether in one of its offices or in a remote geographical location, and then be able to share those stories across its global network.”

Signiant is a US company with its HQ in Burlington, Massachusetts. Its UK office is in Manchester.

DMDMS has already been adopted by NBC Universal and post-production facility Pepper.