UK subscription-free digital satellite TV service Freesat has announced what it describes as “a good start” to 2014, adding 18,000 homes, suggesting that budget-conscious consumers are switching away from expensive pay-TV packages. Freesat, which celebrates the sixth anniversary of its launch this week, is now available in 1.84 million households, and is watched by more […]
Reliance Communications added 100,000 net new DTH subscribers during its Q4 period. Reliance Digital TV is the smallest of India’s six DTH broadcasters with around 4.8 million, some 8 per cent of India’s claimed total DTH viewers. India’s media regulator says the country has almost 63 million “registered” subscribers, but 27.16 million are “inactive” (43.13 […]
Canada-based satellite operator Telesat, which has a fleet of Anik satellites serving mostly Canadian clients, says its near-time ownership could soon change. CEO Dan Goldberg confirmed what the industry has long anticipated, which is that current majority shareholder Loral Space & Communications would sell itself to a new owner, which would then negotiate a shareholder […]
TIMA (The International Media Associates), a global facilities and content service provider, has signed a three-year contract with Eutelsat Communications for dedicated capacity on the Eutelsat 10A satellite to serve the growing market for satellite news gathering across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and reporting from the studios of its central London Headquarters. With […]
StarTimes says it will invest $75 million in order to expand its digital satellite and DTT coverage over Kenya. StarTimes is competing locally with GOtv, Zuku and DStv. According to StarTimes VP/Marketing Hans Han, “We intend to ride on our current 70 per cent digital television network coverage in the country to extend the reach […]
The past few weeks have been mostly doom and gloom as analysts predicted miserable results from UK pay-TV supplier BSkyB. The actual results were not at all bad. Net new TV subs were up 74,000 during the quarter-year to March 31st, for example, to 10.61 million. Net new HD connections were up 108,000, to 5.1 […]
A merger between DirecTV and EchoStar’s Dish might make good sense for an industry which as far as North America is concerned has plateaued as far as new business is concerned. But in steps telco giant AT&T with a “possible acquisition” of DirecTV. The Wall Street Journal reports that such a deal might cost AT&T […]
Intelsat reported reduced revenues for Q1 (period to March 31st) of $628.9 million, down from $655.1 million y-o-y and not helped by falls in all of its key revenue centres. Network Services fell back 3 per cent from last year’s $298 million to $290.2 million. Media-related capacity sales also fell 1 per cent, from $223.2 […]
India’s rush towards digital broadcasting, and pay-TV in particular, shows no sign of slowing. Bharti-owned Airtel TV added almost 1 million new subscribers to its DTH service (for the year to March 31st). The extra subscribers also transformed the financial health of the business, and improved revenues translated into a 638 per cent jump in […]
Thaicom’s CEO Suphajee Suthumpun says her company’s Thaicom-8 satellite will launch 1H/2016 in order to further expand Thailand’s broadcasting industry, and will be placed at the company’s ‘hot spot’ orbital position at 78.5 deg East (along with Thaicom-5 and 6). “The satellite will also allow us to meet the Ultra-HD demands for Thailand and the […]