Advanced Television

AsiaSat warns “challenging year ahead”

April 8, 2020

By Chris Forrester

Hong Kong-based AsiaSat celebrated its 30th birthday on April 7th. CEO Roger Tong thanked staff and clients for their work and support over the period. But he admitted the current position during the economic decline was tough.

“During the second half of 2019, AsiaSat completed its strategic initiatives in privatising the company and delisting the shares from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, collocated our business, technical and operations teams into our wholly-owned facility, and established our overseas presence in selected countries. We are fortunate to have completed all the above prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, and able to continue our business operations without significant adverse effects,” he said.

“With the uncertainty on the assignment of the 5G spectrum by different countries finally settling, the realisation of the technical limitations on using terrestrial infrastructure to stream high quality video and the business model challenges on Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communications, I anticipate the industry will realign with less speculative possibilities and will lead to a healthy development in the area of natural fit for satellite communications,” he said, somewhat more optimistically.

“Taking into account all the unprecedented events in 2020, we expect the years ahead will be challenging for AsiaSat and the industry.  We will continue to build upon our early successes demonstrated in entering new markets, providing new services, and creating new partners through the balance of 2020 despite the mobility and social distancing restrictions. We are fully committed to working with our partners on our transformation into a fully-integrated customer service-oriented company that leverages our satellite communications infrastructure to provide the highest quality services,” he concluded.

Categories: Articles, Business, DTH/Satellite