Eutelsat Italia has announced it will offer incentives for local broadcasters in Italy to switch from terrestrial to satellite transmissions. According to managing director Renato Farina, the move “aims to facilitate the use of the HotBird satellite to mitigate the consequences deriving from the refarming of the 700 MHz band”. He pointed out that the […]

DirecTV lost a net overall 359,000 DTH subscribers during the quarter-year to September 30th. Worse, perhaps, is that its OTT service DirecTV Now managed to persuade only 49,000 new subscribers to trade down. The losses were significantly more than even the worst predictions from the market. Losses of around 245,000-250,000 had been expected, much the […]

Sky Italia, as reported yesterday, is to add fixed-line broadband as well as a mobile product in the Spring of 2019, according to equity analysts at Deutsche Bank, quoting Italian sources. “The fixed broadband aspect was known – Sky signed an agreement with Open Fibre in March to provide fibre to the home (FTTH) – […]

The investigation into October 11th catastrophic launch of a Soyuz MS-10 rocket, and which endangered two crew members travelling to the International Space Station, will wrap by the end of the month. The launch was insured, which will impact rates with the insurance sector. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, says the state commission had now […]

Satellite communications innovator and space gateway Goonhilly Earth Station has opened an office at the Cody Technology Park in Farnborough, Hampshire, in support of its plans to expand its consultancy, design engineering and small-scale manufacturing capabilities. The new site gives Goonhilly more space to expand its design engineering team and attract talented engineers in both the […]

4KUniverse, a 24/7 4K HDR general entertainment TV channel, airing original TV series, movies, documentaries, sports and primetime programming, all in 4K HDR, has confirmed that it will be launching on the popular Hotbird video neighbourhood on November 1st. Once positioned on Hotbird, the channel will be capable of reaching key cable and IPTV networks, […]

Russia’s catastrophic loss on October 11th of an important Soyuz rocket is being rapidly investigated, and the event is subject to a criminal enquiry. Other users of the Soyuz rocket variants include Arianespace, and any potential delay to their planned launches would be damaging to the satellite industry. A preliminary study indicates that one of […]

The 15th annual Censis report on the state of the communications sector in Italy has confirmed that traditional TV is increasingly losing ground to new distribution platforms. DTT and DTH were used by 89.9 per cent and 41.2 per cent of Italians in 2018 for watching TV, however both lost 2.3 per cent of the […]