[Satellite News 09-13-10] SES Astra CEO Ferdinand Kayser told Satellite News that the operator likely will be carrying 10 3-D TV channels on its satellites in 2011, and all previous indicators in HD point this to be a conservative estimate.
    “At the end of the year, we will have four to five 3-D TV channels,” he said. “The point is with HD, we have always underestimated the numbers of channels in the years to come. We have always done that. The target for 2010 was 120 HD channels. We’re already at a number of 150 HD channels. Next year, we will have 10 3-D TV channels. By the end of 2012, we could easily have 20 3-D TV channels.”
    In terms of the capacity requirements these new channels could bring, Kayser said, “The bandwidth used for a 3-D channel as absolutely comparable to the one being used for an HD channel. Five additional 3-D channels can easily equal an extra 50 megabits.”
    SES Astra is optimistic that 3-D TV will prove a hit, and Kayser expects a similar growth curve to what was seen when HD services started to launch in Europe four years ago. “We are comparing the development of 3-D TV with the development we had four years ago with HDTV. At the very beginning, it was the consumer electronics manufacturers who introduced the equipment through various marketing activities. Compared to the launch of HD five years ago, the launch of 3-D TV seems to be much more aggressive. The prices of the 3-D TV screens are not that much higher than the HD screens. When HD was launched five years ago, there was a lack of content. The operators are already starting to launch 3-D TV channels, similar to what happened with HD. We think that 3-D TV will move quickly from being a niche product,” he said.
    Ultimately, 3-D TV could grow at a rapid pace in Europe than in other regions,” Kayser said. “If you look at the HD subscribers in the United Kingdom and Germany and France, they can use the HD receiver they have already to receive 3-D. When HD was introduced, this could only be done after the HD receiver was in peoples’ homes. That is an advantage that 3-D has, so overall, it could be quicker.”
    Another market SES Astra is targeting over the next few years is the satellite broadband market in Europe. The operator already has around 65,000 subscribers for its Astra2Connect service “We think subscriber growth will continue on the lines of adding 10,000 subscribers a quarter. Potentially, the target number of households (for residential satellite broadband) is in the hundreds of thousands, and it could even reach 1 or 2 million households, but the point is this has to be managed in a flexible way, because there will be terrestrial solutions. What is key here is flexibility, because households that have had the broadband via satellite connection will gain a terrestrial one, and then you will have to deploy the solution elsewhere,” said Kayser.
    While other operators such as Eutelsat and Avanti have aggressively invested in dedicated Ka-band satellites, SES Astra has adopted a different approach, with various Ka-bands spread throughout different satellites. “It is a more modular approach and a more flexible one. We did not want to have all of our eggs in the same basket. We recognize the merits of Ka-band, but we prefer not to invest in one big satellite. That is one big distinction between us and other operators in Europe. We can see how Ka-band develops, and we could do additional investments in the future,” he said.