[11-29-07 – Satellite Today] Eutelsat Communications will sell capacity on its Atlantic Bird 3 satellite to Algerian broadcaster Télédiffusion d’Algérie (TDA), Eutelsat announced Nov. 29.
    The five-year contract, which begins Dec. 1, is for one transponder connected to Atlantic Bird 3’s steerable spotbeam centered over Algeria. With this footprint, TDA is equipped to provide high-power coverage of the entire Algerian territory, the Maghreb region and Mediterranean Basin countries for direct-to-home reception with 60-centimeter antennas.
TDA will use the capacity to broadcast Algeria’s national digital terrestrial TV package, with delivery of the channels scheduled to begin in 2008 when the first batch of terrestrial transmitters is activated. TDA’s objective is to ensure access to DTT channels for all Algerian homes as quickly as possible, both in urban and the most rural parts of Algeria, which is the largest of the Mediterranean countries and the second largest in Africa after Sudan.