Last week, Sky CEO Jeremy Darroch stated that Sky in the UK would start Ultra-HD transmissions later in 2016. Documentation issued at his press conferences talks about UHD at 3840 x 2160 pixels.  He declined to give a specific start date, but he was enthusiastic in saying that Sky’s introduction of its all-new Sky Q […]

A couple of recent polls have revealed that Quality of Experience is an important factor in satisfaction and subscription renewal with OTT services. You may feel this falls into the ‘You don’t say?’ or even the ‘Do bears use wooded areas as lavatories?’ category of surveys. But behind the obvious are challenging technology questions and […]

Satellite share prices are not quite flavour of the month at the moment, and each of the ‘big three’ operators (Intelsat, SES and Eutelsat) have suffered significant share price falls over the past few weeks. However, London-based Avanti is suffering more than most. The past month has seen Avanti Communications fall back from 256.7p on […]

There have been more than a few reports these past weeks that the role of satellite-delivered TV is under threat from broadband and OTT services such as Netflix. ‘Not so’, implies Stephen Spengler, president and CEO at satellite giant Intelsat. Addressing a Morgan Stanley investors conference last week in Barcelona, Spengler admitted to analysts that […]

Charlie Ergen’s Dish Network has filed a formal response to the proposed Charter Communications merger plan with Time Warner Cable. In its letter to the FCC, Dish outlines how the applicants have failed to prove that this proposed merger is in the public interest and reiterates its call for the FCC to deny the merger. […]

Vivendi, the French media giant which controls Canal Plus, Universal Music Group and DailyMotion, has badly upset the investment community. First up, its core numbers are miserable, but that hasn’t been the problem. The grumble from equity analysts is that they collectively asked Vivendi’s senior management including CEO Vincent Bolloré, a series of questions during […]

There are now a handful of ‘Western’ Low Earth and Medium Earth satellite constellations either in use or in the planning and development stage.  Russia and China are talking about building their own system. The current constellations include O3b (a MEO system), and LEO systems from the Iridium sat-phone vehicles, and Globalstar, Orbcomm and RapidEye+.  […]

A comprehensive 19-page report from equity analysts at Deutsche Bank (DB) takes a close look at the world’s three major DTH satellite operators, and doesn’t much care for what it finds. DB examines Intelsat, SES and Eutelsat and comes to the conclusion that “video growth will slow”. “Our concern is not that TV platforms will […]

Senior officials at Russia’s new Vostochny space port have been charged with alleged fraud. Russia’s Politikar special police force are alleging that there has been an $84 million series of corrupt payments made during the construction of the cosmodrome. Russian news agency TASS says that the former CEO at the project, Yuri Khrizman, and the […]

Stephen Spengler, CEO at Intelsat, told analysts that the satellite industry in general is suffering an imbalance in supply over demand. “We have an imbalance of supply and demand globally in pretty much most regions that relates to traditional satellite capacity. It’s a tougher environment from a pricing standpoint as a result. What’s coming up […]