Arqiva quits playout
November 2, 2018
By Chris Forrester
Arqiva, a major facilities, playout and satellite teleport operator, is exiting its playout business.
The company says it will be ‘business as usual’ for the near-future, but following a review of its Satellite & Media division, says it will not be renewing existing contracts with customers.
“We will gradually seek to exit playout and reposition our Occasional Use (OU) business, moving away from the uplink and distribution of events via satellite,” said Arqiva in a statement. “We will continue to operate in the live events space as a managed service provider and will be focusing our efforts on services that ensure content acquisition, contribution and distribution (including OTT and VOD). More broadly, we also see growth in our satellite data communications business.”
Arqiva’s statement said there would be no immediate redundancies, and that its existing clients were aware of the company’s plans.
Arqiva refinanced some £600 million of borrowing earlier on 2018. It operates around 1,150 TV transmission sites in the UK, and a further 1,500 radio transmission sites. It looks after about 8,000 telco cellular sites. It also accesses more than 40 satellites from 80 uplink dishes from its five teleports. In its most recent Annual Report, it said manages the distribution of 1,100 international TV channels.