A Nilesat facility. Photo: Nilesat

[Via Satellite 03-09-2015] Egyptian satellite operator Nilesat plans to launch its smart digital broadcasting system this April, which will bolster the company’s broadcasting services. The regional initiative will enable the compression and multiplexing of 360 television services and 120 radio services through 24 digital transport beams. The upgrade provides room to expand the number of television services to 480 over 30 beams.

Cisco, Media Era Technologies (Mera-Tech), Bridge Technologies and Newtec are all partners with Nilesat on its smart digital broadcasting platform. Cisco’s media production solutions provide Nilesat global content distribution, along with means to reduce costs through consolidating and virtualizing media applications and infrastructure. Mera-Tech, an integrator and consultancy partner, has delivered the services needed for architecture design, planning, testing, deploying, and optimizing the end-to-end solution. Bridge Technologies is supplying digital media measuring and analysis technology, and Newtec has provided more than 30 M6100 broadcast satellite modulators that can be upgraded to support Digital Video Broadcasting–Satellite Second Generation X (DVB-S2X) and Carrier ID insertion (DVB-CID).

Nilesat broadcasts more than 730 TV channels and 140 digital radio channels from across the Middle East, with more than 75 percent of TV channels being Free-to-Air (FTA). The operator reached more than 60 million households in 2013, up from 11 million in 2003.