Arabsat expanding footprint
September 16, 2015
By Chris Forrester
Canada’s Telesat and Arabsat are to enter a joint-venture to own a new satellite, HellasSat-4. A Request for Proposals will be issued in the next few weeks and the plan is understood to see Telesat take a large suite of Ku-band transponders on HellasSat-4.
In separate news Arabsat has also taken a batch of transponders on Asia Broadcast Satellite’s (ABS) ABS-3A craft.
Arabsat also announced at IBC that it was backing Emerging Markets Communications (EMC) to launch ‘TRIO’ which it claims is the first true triple-play offering from satellite offering 10Mb of broadband capacity, as well as FTA and pay-TV channels. In essence EMC/TRIO are taking all of Arabsat’s BADR-7 Ka-band capacity (24 transponders). Badr-7 is due for launch in November.