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Inside Satellite

Chris Forrester

Chris Forrester is one of the most experienced and highly regarded journalists in the field. His insight and analysis, particularly in the satellite and pay-TV arena, is highly prized. He has written for all the major business journals in the sector as well as several national newspapers.

ICASA sets digi-timetable

South Africa’s media regulator ICASA has set July 30th as the date for written submissions to be made on its latest proposed regulations covering digital terrestrial broadcasting. ICASA says it will then fast-track the new rules and produce its final regulations by September. ICASA says there are two main changes to the regulations on which […]

July 16, 2012

Eutelsat confident of Ka-sat/Tooway biz

Eutelsat has published some highly competitive rates for its consumer-based Tooway business, which uses its massive Ka-Sat satellite.  In a fresh report on Eutelsat, bankers Morgan Stanley says the satellite operator’s rates for satellite-were “pretty punchy” and compared very well with the sort of prices and usage caps applied by the likes of British Telecom […]

July 10, 2012

Eutelsat clarifies TooWay pricing

Eutelsat deservedly won plenty of editorial space last week with its news that its Ka-Sat multiple spot beam satellite was now offering a series of extremely competitive TooWay residential ‘broadband-by-satellite’ services. Eutelsat’s TooWay, said a Press Release, would offer users speeds of up to 18Mbps, an increase of 8Mbps. The release quoted a price of […]

July 9, 2012

Morgan Stanley: YouView mixed news for rivals

July 4th was YouView’s launch day in the UK when Britain’s ‘TV Apprentice’ host, Lord Alan Sugar, unveiled the service and explained the project’s roll-out plans. In a report issued just hours ahead of Lord Sugar’s early morning presentation, investment bankers Morgan Stanley issued their own comments on the impact YouView might have on the […]

July 4, 2012By Chris Forrester

Intelsat is No. 1 in satellite

The annual ‘Space News’ list of satellite operators has tended these past few years to be a simple repeat of the previous year’s rankings. In fact there’s usually more interest in the lower-ranked players where there’s more jockeying for position. This year, as last, it is Intelsat that’s officially the world’s largest satellite operator with […]

July 3, 2012

OLEDs: Start saving now!

Sony and Panasonic’s joint plans for mass-production of giant OLED screens will start making an impact on availability in 2013. But don’t expect prices to come tumbling down soon. Both Panasonic and Sony will want to recover some of their initial R&D costs, so the retail cost of these 55″ behemoths will be high. Research […]

July 2, 2012

Greece’s OTE selling HellasSat, for real…

The joke in the industry – totally unfairly – is that Greece’s national telco OTE started looking for a buyer of HellasSat just before the foundation stones were laid on the Athens Acropolis. However, OTE is now beginning to get some traction from sales efforts on other parts of its non-local portfolio of assets.  Globul, […]

June 27, 2012

BT’s Premier League; no score

Last week BT committed to pay £738 million for a total of 114 English Premier League (EPL) football matches, to be screened over a 3 year period. Now the back-room number-crunchers have looked closely at the deal, and one investment banker says BT is most unlikely to make money from the deal. Bankers at Espirito […]

June 26, 2012

Measat confirms 3 new satellites

Measat says it is on schedule to launch three new satellites over the next two years. Measat’s SVP/space systems development Ali R Ebadi said its Africasat-1a craft was scheduled for launch in February next year, followed by Measat-3b at the end-2013 and Measat3C in 2014. “We continuously invest in satellite capacity to support the rapidly […]

June 25, 2012

Eutelsat vs Iran satellite nightmare continues

A very long-running squabble between Eutelsat and Iran, which also involves Arabsat and the state of Qatar, is getting ever-more complex and has no sign of being resolved. At stake is a brand-new satellite now being built for Eutelsat and Qatar, and worth around $300 million and due for launch next year. The problem is […]

June 19, 2012