Advanced Television

Eutelsat: 72,000 active Ka-band terminals

February 8, 2013

By Chris Forrester

Eutelsat is beginning to make progress with its giant Ka-Sat broadband satellites. It says it now has 72,000 ‘active’ Tooway terminals as at December 31st, up from 52,450 in June last year. Eutelsat modified and simplified its pricing structure for Tooway last month.  The increased subscriber levels on broadband means that iEutelsat’s Value-Added Services division grew 37.6 per cent to €31.2 million.

In other Eutelsat numbers released late on February 7th, overall revenues grew 5.2 per cent at €633.6 million, while EBITDA grew 4.9 per cent to €501.9 million, helping deliver its operating margin of 79.2 per cent.

Other key metrics include a record contract backlog of €5.4 billion (up 0.5 per cent). At December 31st 2012, the total number of TV channels broadcast by Eutelsat’s satellites was 4,485, up 7.5 per cent year-on-year. The channel count includes 398 HDTV channels, up 40.6 per cent, implying an overall HD penetration rate of 8.9 per cent compared to 6.8 per cent a year earlier. The strongest channel growth was recorded at the 7°/8° West video neighbourhood (+25 per cent). 36° East, with coverage of Russia and sub-Saharan Africa, showed the largest increase in HDTV channels (+97 per cent).

The HOT BIRD position at 13° East (covering Europe), 7°/8° West, 16° East and 7° East (covering Turkey) all reported growth in HD channels at rates higher than 30 per cent.

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