Castor Networks, a provider of teleport, VSAT and broadcasting services, has launched trunking services to the Middle East and Central Asia from its base in The Netherlands, using Newtec’s award-winning FlexACM(R) technology. FlexACM guarantees the highest level of availability and maximum end-to-end efficiency to the satellite link. Castor’s Internet trunking services operate on Express AM-1 […]

North American satellite pay-TV providers have not been adding subscribers at the same rate as previous years, according to In-Stat.  Competition has been fierce from cable and telco providers offering bundled services and gains in subscribers as a result of being the video portion of telco triple play offers, have mostly run their course.  In […]

Jordan Media City, the nation’s main teleport and with direct links to Cairo-based Nilesat, said that it has been under pressure from the NileSat administration to drop the Al Jazeera satellite news channel from its package of channels that broadcast via Nilesat. BBC Monitoring is reporting that Al Jazeera is accusing NileSat administration of blocking […]

French free-to-air digital broadcasting operator TNTSat says it has sold 2.65 million satellite receivers for its SES Astra transmissions. Some 800,000 units were sold during 2010. The system, which retransmits TNT’s digital broadcasts onto satellite, went live in March 2007. “The continued strong growth of TNTSat is driven by digitalisation and the analogue switch-off in […]

Viasat Broadcasting will launch three new HD channels in Sweden at the beginning of March. First out is Viasat’s core brand – TV3 – which will be available also as TV3 HD on March 1st. The premium sports channels Viasat Fotboll and Viasat Motor will get their HD versions on 10 March. TV3 HD will […]

Fifty-seven per cent of satellite broadband supplier Hughes Communications is being put up for sale by private equity investor Apollo. Intelsat, Echostar and Inmarsat are each said to be looking at the stake and have expressed interest. Maryland-based Hughes sells satellite capacity, including broadband, to the US government, large businesses and private consumers not well […]

SES Astra, has signed an agreement with Italian network operator Tivuitalia for capacity on its 31.5 degrees East orbital position. Tivuitalia will use the capacity for contribution services, enabling the transmission of digital TV and radio signals to its digital terrestrial network in Italy. In addition to capacity for DTT, SES Astra will also provide […]

CNBC, the business and financial news channel, has commenced broadcasting on Viasat in Scandinavia and the Baltic states, in a move that further extends the channel’s footprint in EMEA. The agreement with Viasat Broadcasting, the leading satellite TV operator in Scandinavia and the Baltics, will see CNBC available in seven new territories: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, […]