The Novaspace World Space Business Week kicked off in Paris but the news for video DTH confirms that the sector is in decline. Telesat’s CEO Dan Goldberg told delegates that people are watching more and more video, but it’s streaming and TikTok. “Unfortunately, they’re not watching so much satellite TV. It has been steady decline, and I do not think this decline will be reversed,” he noted.

However, Goldberg stressed that while the sector might be in decline, they were still serving millions of customers, including – in Telesat’s case – DISH Network in the US.

Telesat is building its Lightspeed low Earth orbiting constellation and said the interest from governments was considerable. Also helping was the NATO commitment, including Canada, were increasing their commitment and for the foreseeable future, he expected governments would be leveraging their investment in satellite.

Goldberg also said that he was confident that Canada, and Telesat’s Lightspeed, would be open to cooperation with Europe on its IRIS2 super-secure mega-constellation, should Canada be invited to join the scheme.

Eutelsat’s CEO Jean-François Fallacher agreed with the general trend as far as Video was concerned, but said that Eutelsat’s portfolio of satellites and regions was very vibrant, “but we have to adapt to what is a new world”. Fallacher added there was growth in government defence demands, and the situation in Ukraine required extra services for sovereign and government use.

Paul Gaske, COO at EchoStar admitted that his DTH/DBS services were not likely to grow. EchoStar was investing in fresh capacity especially in aviation. EchoStar was using OneWeb as part of its portfolio of non-DTH services.

Viasat’s CEO Mark Dankberg said the situation in Ukraine was a major factor in demand, but the industry needed to be aware that from a national security view operators were also threatened by transmission counter-measures and these had the ability to interfere with aircraft and maritime traffic.

Dankberg confirmed that Viasat is building a LEO constellation in conjunction with the UAE’s Space42.

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Categories: Articles, Broadband, Broadcast, DTH/Satellite, Satellite

Tags: eutelsat, novaspace, telesat, Viasat