Continued from page 22 features have an enhanced online presence,” she added. FORUM. Arabsat’ s annual Customer Forum, held in Salalah, Oman in November was an opportunity to hear from broadcasters from across the region. Wael Al Buti, VP / CCO at Arabsat, told guests how the orbital position is growing, with more broadcasters coming onboard, and that there were now more than 170 HDTV channels on Arabsat satellites, and that 78 % of households across the GCC have their dishes turned to its 26-degree East position.
His comments were backed by Vidya Subramanian Nath, research director at Frost & Sullivan, who delivered fascinating insights into MENA TV viewing habits. She advised that there are 66m TV households in the region and ownership of HD sets topped 62 %. She added that 77 % of TV viewing is through satellite, although only 11 % of viewers subscribe to pay-TV services.
Arabsat has a powerful manifest of new satellites coming on stream over the next few years. One of the satellites( 6D) is being built by Saudi Arabia’ s King AbdulAziz City for Science & Technology, and will be a jointventure with Taqnia Space which will use the craft for in-flight connectivity. Taqnia is also an anchor client on a portion of HellasSat4( dubbed SaudiGeoSat-1). The bottom line for Arabsat is that by the end of 2018, it will have 10 operational satellites, and the youngest fleet, and- helped by its Es’ hailSat associates- the 25.5 / 26 ° East‘ hot spot’ will be carrying at least 17 channels of sport, and fast-approaching 200 channels in HD. Arabsat is also looking to establish new bouquets for Cyprus and Germany, and appealing to Arab expats. PROGRESS. A relatively new player on the satellite broadcasting scene is MyHD. Despite struggling for a few years, the bouquet of channels is now making progress, claims Samir Safer, CEO.“ When you decide to launch a new pay-TV platform, you try to find strong partners. Now most channels want HD-quality content streamed. Arabsat has been a great partner for bringing HD to the region. We have a reach in 22 countries for our low-cost pay-TV platform.”
He explained that MyHD’ s aim was to reach clients with smaller dishes and able to receive HD channels at lower costs.“ After five years, we have grown significantly in this position,” he stated, adding that MyHD now offers different packages for different regions with bouquets for Indians and Filipinos, and a bundle of channels for the Maghreb.
BBC Global News head of distribution, Nigel Fry, says that the MENA region is extremely important to the BBC and in particular the dominant position of satellite.“ We produce content in 41 languages, and at the moment we are reaching 346 million people worldwide. Of the viewers we have, there are 43 million in the Arab world, so it’ s a big market for us.” Fry added that while broadband was of growing importance generally, traditional satellite distribution reached far larger audiences. INVESTMENT. That audience will expand helped by further investment by Arabsat and its Qatar associates at Es’ hailSat. A new teleport will open shortly in Qatar, thereby guaranteeing secure uplinking for its Al Jazeera and beIN Sport clients. Of course, the teleport will also be open to other channels and be ready for the 2022 FIFA World Cup hosted by Qatar. Controversial as the decision might be to award the football rights to Qatar, the local broadcast community needs to be fully ready to beam signals to the rest of the world.
While few observers expect the diplomatic crisis to last another four years, the current travel ban on Saudis and the other
“ Traditional satellite distribution reaches far larger audiences.” – Nigel Fry, BBC Global News
neighbouring nations would certainly hurt game attendance if not resolved.
Well ahead of the World Cup will be the launch of Es’ hailSat-2 in mid-2018. Being built by Mitsubishi Electric in Japan, the satellite will go to 26 ° East, launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Es’ hailSat’ s CEO Ali Al Kuwari signed the deal with SpaceX’ s COO Gwynne Shotwell back in December 2016. Es’ hailSat has made no secret of its wish to see other satellites launched in the future, and to expand its footprints. For example, it had a major presence at a recent Turkish communications exhibition. Es’ hailSat-2 will carry 24 Ku-band and 11 Ka-band transponders.
The news proves that, at least in space, there can be peaceful expansion in a region that still shows great promise in terms of channel growth, viewer loyalty and technical progress.
24 EUROMEDIA