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 is No. 1 in satellite

The annual ‘Space News’ list of satellite operators has tended these past few years to be a simple repeat of the previous year’s rankings. In fact there’s usually more interest in the lower-ranked players where there’s more jockeying for position. This year, as last, it is Intelsat that’s officially the world’s largest satellite operator with […]

July 3, 2012

OLEDs: Start saving now!

Sony and Panasonic’s joint plans for mass-production of giant OLED screens will start making an impact on availability in 2013. But don’t expect prices to come tumbling down soon. Both Panasonic and Sony will want to recover some of their initial R&D costs, so the retail cost of these 55″ behemoths will be high. Research […]

July 2, 2012

Greece’s OTE selling HellasSat, for real…

The joke in the industry – totally unfairly – is that Greece’s national telco OTE started looking for a buyer of HellasSat just before the foundation stones were laid on the Athens Acropolis. However, OTE is now beginning to get some traction from sales efforts on other parts of its non-local portfolio of assets.  Globul, […]

June 27, 2012

BT’s Premier League; no score

Last week BT committed to pay £738 million for a total of 114 English Premier League (EPL) football matches, to be screened over a 3 year period. Now the back-room number-crunchers have looked closely at the deal, and one investment banker says BT is most unlikely to make money from the deal. Bankers at Espirito […]

June 26, 2012

Measat confirms 3 new satellites

Measat says it is on schedule to launch three new satellites over the next two years. Measat’s SVP/space systems development Ali R Ebadi said its Africasat-1a craft was scheduled for launch in February next year, followed by Measat-3b at the end-2013 and Measat3C in 2014. “We continuously invest in satellite capacity to support the rapidly […]

June 25, 2012

Eutelsat vs Iran satellite nightmare continues

A very long-running squabble between Eutelsat and Iran, which also involves Arabsat and the state of Qatar, is getting ever-more complex and has no sign of being resolved. At stake is a brand-new satellite now being built for Eutelsat and Qatar, and worth around $300 million and due for launch next year. The problem is […]

June 19, 2012

BSkyB: “4 more years”

The verdicts are in, the stock market pundits have exercised their confidence –  or otherwise – and the sports pages have had their say on whether BSkyB did the right thing by spending a spectacular £200 million a year more on primetime English Premier League action for the three upcoming soccer season from 2013. Also […]

June 18, 2012

BSkyB: It’s déjà vu all over again

Baseball star Yogi Berra summed up the situation perfectly, saying it’s déjà vu all over again, at least as far as BSkyB, and the other finalists are concerned in the English Premier League football bidding war. First, BSkyB has paid £100 million more, per season, than the highest-expected estimates. But Sky knows what it’s doing. […]

June 14, 2012

Loral satellites cleared for take-off

It seems that EchoStar-17, a satellite built by Space Systems/Loral, has been cleared for launch by Arianespace on July 5. The satellite was held back while awaiting a report on the problems that occurred with a Sea Launch/Energia rocket launch on May 31st ago, and which resulted in the Intelsat – 19 satellite not being […]

June 12, 2012

“Rubbish” says Comcast on BSkyB bid rumour

The New York Times reported June 8 that Comcast – still digesting its giant purchase of NBC – is now looking for another meal, and has BSkyB in its sights. Despite a very firm denial from Comcast’s CFO Michael Angelakis, who stated that the report was total speculation and inaccurate, the bid rumour sent BSkyB’s […]

June 11, 2012