SES-6, a new satellite serving South and North America, as well as Europe, was only launched on June 4th but is already proving a commercial success. SES says it has sold a large slice of the craft’s available capacity to a Brazilian DTH operator, ‘Oi’ as part of a “significant long-term capacity agreement”.

The ‘Oi’ logo was on display on the side of the Proton rocket at lift-off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

“With SES-6, Oi has access to significant additional satellite capacity at the right time in order to take its pay-TV services to the next level of development,” Oi’s COO James Meaney said in a statement, adding that much of the new capacity will be devoted to high-definition channels.

“This very important capacity agreement for a large part of the Ku-band transponders of SES-6 enables Oi to launch a new DTH platform for the Brazilian market,” said Romain Bausch, President and CEO of SES. “This agreement is a quantum leap for us in this very important and dynamically growing market, demonstrating how satellites substantially support telecommunication companies in the development and delivery of triple- and quadruple-play hybrid services. In addition, by early replacing the NSS-806 satellite and by adding new C-band capacity, the investment into the SES-6 satellite reflects our strong focus on the Latin American market and the development of an important video neighbourhood at the 40.5 degrees West orbital position.”

Oi is the new name for Brazil’s largest telecoms business, Telemar, and is the second-largest telco in the whole of South America. Oi now has more than 22 million land-lines, some 31.7 million cellular clients and 4 million ADSL customers.  The business is 22.4 percent owned by Portugal Telecom.

Oi is the major Brazilian sponsor for next year’s FIFA World Cup.

Other posts by Chris Forrester:

1. Thuraya-3 suffers major problem
2. AST SpaceMobile hit by Class Action
3. Optimism under threat at SES
4. Rivada visits Terran Orbital’s manufacturing HQ
5. Avanti wins spectrum debt obligation case
6. SpaceX breaks records for re-use launchers
7. IRIS2 already in trouble?
8. Intelsat contemplates next steps
9. SpaceX: 2.7m customers and $180bn value

Categories: Blogs, DTH/Satellite, Inside Satellite