Satellite giant Intelsat is buying 4 more Boeing high-throughput HS702 satellites. These 4 Intelsat ‘Epic’ craft will each cost more than $250 million to build, launch and insure. The surprise order is one of the largest ever placed for satellites, and is in addition to a similar 4-satellite order placed in 2009 with the first […]
The US government is cutting back on spending, and this is beginning to hurt Eutelsat’s revenues. While the satellite operator is stressing ‘business as normal’ and is firmly maintaining its official revenue guidance although admitting growth could be at the “lower end” of forecasts. It seems that shareholders took the warnings of lower revenues from […]
Africa’s Niger state is a long way from Istanbul, but Turkey’s Turksat has sent a delegation, the Turkish visitors were led by Ozkan Dalbay, the director general of Turksat. Dalbay told his hosts: “I have come here to Niger to sign a contract between Turksat and The Niger Radio and Television Broadcasting Corporation [ORTN]. Turksat […]
Sky in the UK and Sky Deutschland have added 30,000 and 42,000 subscribers respectively in the first quarter of 2013. Sky is no longer breaking out DTH subscribers from those to its Now TV OTT offering so the DTH subscriber growth may have been flat or down, states MRG research. Sky in Germany has doubled […]
As expected, Paris-based satellite operator Eutelsat turned in an impressive set of Q3 numbers after trading hours on May 7th. All its key metrics were positive with insiders also talking optimistically about the state of play on its giant Ka-Sat craft. An order from Rawafed Libya for 1.6 Gb/s Ka-Sat service in terms of capacity […]
DirecTV has announced an increase in first quarter 2013 revenues up 8 per cent to $7.58 billion, adjusted operating profit up 8 per cent to $1.4 billion, compared to last year’s first quarter. “Building on the momentum of one of the largest transitional years in our history, DirecTV delivered another strong quarter of operating and […]
Now that the dust has settled down on BSkyB’s Q3 results, perhaps it is time to reflect on the overall state of play in UK pay-TV. First, and provided you ignore the deliberate fudge over actual DTH net new subscriptions, which for Q3 were probably – at best – about 5,000, but if you just […]
Brian Sullivan, CEO at Sky Deutschland, is doing rather well at his new Munich home. A long-term News Corp staffer, with a 13-year solid reputation built at BSkyB, he has been in post at Sky-D since January 2010. He inherited a subscriber base of 2.4 million, and a reputation that German viewers were somehow different […]
Croatian mobile telephony operator Vipnet has launched a DTH service branded Vip Sat TV, offering 44 TV channels in the Basic package and an additional 26 TV channels in the Extended package. The move follows the acquisition, in March this year, of full ownership of Digi TV, one of the first providers of pay-TV services […]
Telesat of Canada is to order a new craft to replace Telstar-12 at 15 degrees West. However, first the Ottawa-based company has to resolve key frequency issues with Russia, which holds some valuable priority rights to transmission capacity from the orbital slot. Russia’s RSCC is planning to launch a new satellite, Express-AM8 next year to […]