fleet, and – helped by its Es’ HailSat associates – the 25.5 / 26 degrees 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, according to 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. 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
Es-Hail signs a launch contract with SpaceX
helped by further investment by Arabsat and its Qatar associates at EsHailSat. A new teleport( built by SES TechCom) 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 neighbouring nations would certainly hurt game attendance if not resolved.
Well ahead of the World Cup will be the launch of EsHailSat-2 in mid-2018. Being built by Mitsubishi Electric in Japan, the satellite will go to 26 degrees East, launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. EsHailSat’ s CEO Ali Al Kuwari signed the deal with SpaceX’ s COO Gwynne Shotwell back in December 2016. EsHailSat 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. EsHailSat-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.
Key regional satellite launches
Launch date |
Satellite |
Launcher |
Location |
Q1-2018 |
Arabsat 6A |
Falcon‘ Heavy’ |
30.5 deg E. |
Q2-2018 |
HellasSat 4 |
Ariane 5 |
39 deg E. |
2019 |
Arabsat 6D |
To be confirmed |
44.5 deg E |
Key MENA developments in 2017
“ Traditional satellite distribution reaches far larger audiences.” – Nigel Fry, BBC Global News
12 ADVANCED TELEVISION
January 24 June 5 October 13 November 4 December 11
MBC shifts channels to Arabsat Saudi Arabia breaks off Diplomatic relations with Qatar Eutelsat buys Noorsat for $ 75m Key media VIPs‘ detained’ in Saudi Arabia crackdown Permission granted for cinema openings in Saudi Arabia