John Malone controlled Liberty Global is in the news on a daily basis given Malone’s recent aspiration comments on telco giant Vodafone. Those comments have helped propel both Liberty and Vodafone’s share price to high levels (up 11 per cent this week). But will the deal happen, and if it does who will be ‘in […]
Mumbai-based Dish TV has launched a DTH service to Sri Lanka. Currently 47 channels are on offer. New subscribers will get a two-month payment holiday. Dish TV says it has invested some $4.5 million in the project to date, and that it anticipates another $2 million of funding. It has a 70 per cent stake […]
Arianespace has confirmed the successful deployment of DirecTV-15 and SKY México’s SKY México-1. According to Arianespace, the flight was unique – with both passengers focusing on the same application (direct-to-home television broadcast) and scheduled to operate above the same area of the world (the Americas). DirecTV-15 is to operate at five different orbital positions between […]
The number of pay satellite TV [DBS or DTH] homes will reach 265 million by 2020, up from 203 million at end-2014 and 143 million at end-2010, according to a report from Digital TV Research. Covering 138 countries, the Global Satellite TV Forecasts report estimates that India will continue to lead the sector, with 66.9 […]
Helped by an extra (net) 1.5 million DTH pay-TV subs acquired during the past year, and a total subscriber base of 12.9 million, India’s Dish TV reported 2015 net total income from operations up 10.9 per cent, and EBITDA up 17.5 percent. The broadcaster’s net profit was INR 350 million (€5 million). Dish added 404,000 […]
Unofficial Russian sources say that the May 16th failure of a Proton-Briz M rocket carrying Mexico’s Centenario / Mexsat satellite was caused by “human error”. The formal Investigation Board report has yet to be issued, but Russian news agency TASS states that a “number of violations” have emerged during the investigation. “This is, undoubtedly, a […]
According to reports from BBC Monitoring, some of Nilesat’s channels are being deliberately jammed. Syria’s General Authority for Radio & Television, Bashar Sabsub, is quoted as saying that Syria’s state-backed satellite channel Syria TV is being jammed. He said that viewers could switch to Syria Drama which would carry the main channel’s output. Sabsub told […]
Russian DTH broadcaster Tricolor TV says it now has more than 5 million of its subscribers viewing in HD. Moreover, Tricolor says that it expects the HD-enabled subscriber count to reach 50 per cent of the overall total during this year. Analysts at J’son & Partners say that Tricolor’s HDTV subs now account for 39.6 […]
DirecTV-15, the broadcaster’s latest satellite, and a key element in its 4K/Ultra HD broadcasting plans, is ready for launch on May 27th by an Arianespace rocket from Kourou in French Guiana. Together with a smaller satellite for its Mexican subsidiary, Sky Mexico-1, the two spacecraft will significantly boost capacity and channels available to viewers over […]
The past few years have seen four giant Proton rockets spectacularly fail and in the process destroying their precious – and expensive – satellite cargoes. The latest, that of Satmex-1, failed on May 16th. There is currently a Failure Review Board investigating the technical problems. But reports from Moscow suggest there may be deeper-rooted problems […]