Last week Luxembourg’s SES ordered up 3 launches from the Elon Musk-backed SpaceX rocket system. Industry experts now say that SpaceX, which uses the as yet commercially untested Falcon 9 rocket, is pricing its launches at about half that charged by the industry’s two giant suppliers Arianespace and International Launch Services (ILS) of Washington DC. […]

Despite strong protestations from Avanti Communications that they hold the rights to a disputed satellite slot at 31 degrees East, a dispute between them and SES remains officially unresolved.  Avanti has just commercialised its latest Hylas-2 craft at the spot, claiming it “brought into use” the position when its Hylas-1 satellite paused for 16 days […]

The bitter dispute between EchoStar’s Charlie Ergen and Cablevision’s Dolan family over the long-abandoned Voom HDTV portfolio of channels is about to come to court. Cablevision is suing EchoStar for $2.5 billion in damages, arguing that in taking Voom down from its Dish Network the broadcaster breached a binding contract between the two parties. The […]

Arianespace’s Flight 209, originally planned for this Friday Sept 21, is being delayed for a few days. The giant Ariane 5 rocket was expected to launch Astra 2F and GSAT-10. Astra 2F, weighing some 6 tonnes, is scheduled to go to one of SES’ prime orbital locations at 28.2 deg East, and serve the British […]

CBS CEO Les Moonves told the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference he has “no burning desire” to acquire anything, but “looking down the road, you always say, could we manage some of the cable assets that are out there better than some of the other people? There’s no question about […]

The importance of Arab viewers, and the massive audiences possible from the Middle East, has prompted India’s Zee TV owners to commit to spending $100 million on a second Arabic-language channel.   Its first effort, Zee Aflam, is already operationally profitable showing movies. The second channel, Zee Alwan, is the first of a planned quartet […]

Al Jazeera English is to begin broadcasting 24-hours daily on Freeview from September 19th, significantly increasing the channel’s current reach and potential viewership on the platform from just five hours per evening.     Freeview is currently serving almost 20 million homes, including nearly 11 million main set homes. Al Jazeera English already broadcasts 24/7 […]

Paris-based Eutelsat was awarded the ‘Global Operator of the Year’ prize at the World Satellite Business Week event in Paris, and organised through Euroconsult. Winners are selected by a jury of experts from Euroconsult, Space News and Satellite Finance on the basis of performance analysis of market players. For the ‘Global Operator of the Year’ […]

The Gulf states are suffering a slew of deliberate satellite jamming, and now Bahrain TV has been reported to be subject to jamming on Nilesat, with the interference coming from outside the small island state. The problems occurred over two days this past weekend, and Nilesat is said to be conducting a full investigation.