Euromedia February March | Page 20

Cover Story

Cover Story

( Taqnia Space of Saudi
Arabia). It will hopefully
launch by 2019,” added
Balkheyour. Arabsat also
has thoughts on other
expansion possibilities.
“ Our roadmap? We are
constantly reviewing
where we should go,
where we should invest.
There is no doubt for
us that data, in all its
forms, is important for
the future. And this
could take many forms, including backhaul and OTT. And this might include not just Geostationary,” he admits. MERGER. With the recent news that Intelsat is merging with OneWeb and its planned constellation of up to 2,000 Low Earth Orbiting satellites totally changes the orbiting model for the industry. The merger, facilitated by Japan’ s SoftBank, also seemed to worry the market given that the new pairing taps almost exactly into every existing operator’ s’ s target backhaul and broadband market. Not helping matters is the growing confidence in a pending agreement between Eutelsat and ViaSat( of California) and their joint plans for a ViaSat 3 satellite over Europe and beyond and to deliver
Source: Digital TV Research February 2017 its manifest according to Balkheyour.“ Broadcasters are definitely working towards HD. They recognise the improvements in quality. Some of the larger customers, with a strong free-to-air offering, will maintain dual transmission( in SD and HD) but the pay-TV operators are heavily moving to HDTV.” Arabsat is also looking at other orbits besides geostationary.“ We are looking at LEO and MEO [ Low Earth orbit / medium Earth orbit ], and very seriously,” confirms Balkheyour.“ We
multiple spot-beams to the under-served regions where current broadband service is inadequate or non-existent.
There’ s another existing broadband supplier increasingly busy in
Arabsat’ s space, and this is the SES / O3b combination of geostationary and MEO
“ We have been working on content being part of the carrier’ s bundle and an all-in-one pricing plan.”- Marwen
Shehab, Voddler
cannot afford to miss the developments.
How much we can invest and how we might invest is part of the strategic study now being worked on. We have not finalised our strategy. In general, we think it is better to partner for many
satellites. SES’ s CEO Karim Michel Sabbagh talked about growth rates in the Mobility sector of 95 % over the past three years, its best-performing segment and helped by O3b and its links – and service- to Facebook. As if anticipating the Intelsat + OneWeb deal, Sabbagh said:“ O3b literally has a five-year time to market advantage versus any other comparable fleet that people entertain.” O3b will launch another eight satellites starting this coming winter( 2016-17) and 2018. By mid- 2018, O3b will have 20 satellites in orbit.
Arabsat has around 150 HDTV channels on
obvious reasons, not least to gain knowledge from one another, and to share the market and risk. The minute you enter the LEO or MEO market you are then global. But this isn’ t easy. We need the infrastructure on the ground, as well as the landing rights and other regulatory obligations. At the beginning, it would be wise to partner, but we are not yet in a position to make a decision. We have to make a decision soon, and we expect to present to our Board this year.” CAPACITY. Arabsat’ s fleet is new and with powerful beams. But sharing its 25.5 / 26
degree‘ hot spot’ is its shareholder in the shape of Qatar’ s Es’ Hail Sat, already with capacity available and a new Japanese-built satellite on the near-horizon( likely to be launched later in 2017). Es’ hail-2 brings to the broadcast hotspot additional Ku-band capacity to support the growth of the broadcast sector in the region, with high definition and 4K channels in sports and entertainment genres.“ With Es’ hail-1 and Es’ hail-2 satellites, Es’ hailSat’ s focus was within Middle East and North Africa. However, our goal has been and is to be a strong and reliable satellite operator and service provider in the global arena. In this regard, we have been exploring new satellite programs via acquisition, joint ventures, hosted payload and other investment models. These discussions are on-going with some in advanced stages, which we hope will materialise over the course of the year,” says Es’ HailSat’ s CEO Ali Ahmed Al Kuwari.
“ In terms of regions, we believe Africa and South East Asia holds a lot of promise and we are working on opportunities in those regions. There is opportunity for growth in the telecom sector in these regions. In addition, HTS is definitely an area of interest for us, with options on GEO and LEO being considered for future ES’ HailSat programmes.”
According to Al Kuwari, Es-Hail is currently carrying close to 70 video channels on Es’ hail-1, out of which over 40 channels are in high definition( HD).“ The channels are distributed across GCC and North Africa, however some channels are also received in Saharan Africa and in Turkey. A large number of these channels are premier sports, movies and entertainment channels of beIN and Al Jazeera, however we are also supporting and promoting niche Arabic channels via Es’ hail-1 for distribution across the region. With Es’ hail-2 scheduled to join Es’ hail-1 at the Middle Eastern hotspot of 25.5 ° E / 26 ° E, we expect a large number of new channels to join the ES’ HailSat neighbourhood,” he advises. APPETITE.“ Over the last 12 months, there has been a number of international entertainment and movie channels launched in the region; however, the appetite for Arabic language content has also increased,” notes Al Kuwari.“ Major networks are looking to launch more premier channels that appeal to the masses, especially the younger generation. While at the same time, niche Arabic channels are being rolled out to whet the appetite for entertainment based on regional culture and history. Pay-TV with its aggressive growth plans will see higher growth in the number of
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