Advanced Television

Inside Satellite

Chris Forrester

Chris Forrester is one of the most experienced and highly regarded journalists in the field. His insight and analysis, particularly in the satellite and pay-TV arena, is highly prized. He has written for all the major business journals in the sector as well as several national newspapers.

Intelsat’s EPIC an instant success

Satellite giant Intelsat says its newly-launched EPIC high-throughput satellites have already taken $500 millions-worth of new business even though the satellites are not yet operational. The deals are fascinating, and include aircraft broadband services from Panasonic as well as valuable contracts from the likes of Harris CapRock and MTN Satellite Comms. The new Intelsat satellites […]

August 2, 2012

Eutelsat: Solid, and 52,450 TooWay subs

Eutelsat’s full year results were released late on July 30 showing some extremely solid numbers, including confirmation of an extra satellite order for the operator’s increasingly ‘hot’ orbital spot over the Middle East. But conspicuous by its absence was any detailed explanation on Eutelsat’s Ka-Sat and its TooWay ‘broadband by satellite’ service. Eutelsat says its […]

July 31, 2012

SES waits for HellasSat’s call

Satellite operator SES’ president and CEO Romain Bausch repeated during a conference call that SES remained interested in acquiring the Greek-Cyprus satellite operator HellasSat, but implied that the Athens company had first to make up its mind to sell the asset. He told one caller that for at least the past year or so SES […]

July 30, 2012

New markets boost SES growth

Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES reported further revenue growth on July 27 (for the six months to June 30) citing successes in winning business from new markets as being partly responsible. Revenues were up 4.8 per cent over the same period last year (to €892 million) and generating an operating profit up 2.4 per cent to […]

July 27, 2012

SES claims global HDTV leadership

This Friday (July 27th) SES will unveil its latest financial numbers, but ahead of those figures, it says that it is now leading its rivals in terms of HDTV deployment, and is carrying more than 1,300 high-def channels. They comprise more than 25 per cent of the 5200 channels carried by the SES fleet. As […]

July 25, 2012

Viacom gets 20% rise from DirecTV

It seems that ‘content is still king’ as far as broadcasters are concerned. While the 10-day stand-off between programme supplier Viacom and broadcast platform DirecTV was settled last Friday, the one element missing from the press statements was money! Now, if reports on Bloomberg and elsewhere can be believed, Viacom boss Phillipe Dauman can rub […]

July 23, 2012

Vivendi staffers love…Vivendi

Vivendi staffers, including those working for Canal Plus, are seriously backing their employer with their wallets. Around 10,000 staff have participated in Vivendi’s capital increase, and spending €126.9 million in a share-buying spree. Vivendi’s employees bought 12.3 million new shares, and now own 3.4 per cent of the business and are the fourth-largest shareholder group […]

July 18, 2012By Chris Forrester

ICASA sets digi-timetable

South Africa’s media regulator ICASA has set July 30th as the date for written submissions to be made on its latest proposed regulations covering digital terrestrial broadcasting. ICASA says it will then fast-track the new rules and produce its final regulations by September. ICASA says there are two main changes to the regulations on which […]

July 16, 2012

Eutelsat confident of Ka-sat/Tooway biz

Eutelsat has published some highly competitive rates for its consumer-based Tooway business, which uses its massive Ka-Sat satellite.  In a fresh report on Eutelsat, bankers Morgan Stanley says the satellite operator’s rates for satellite-were “pretty punchy” and compared very well with the sort of prices and usage caps applied by the likes of British Telecom […]

July 10, 2012

Eutelsat clarifies TooWay pricing

Eutelsat deservedly won plenty of editorial space last week with its news that its Ka-Sat multiple spot beam satellite was now offering a series of extremely competitive TooWay residential ‘broadband-by-satellite’ services. Eutelsat’s TooWay, said a Press Release, would offer users speeds of up to 18Mbps, an increase of 8Mbps. The release quoted a price of […]

July 9, 2012