[Satellite TODAY Insider 10-22-10] Analysts and regional broadcasters have highlighted Indonesia’s DTH potential for years, and Measat Satellite Systems has entered into an agreement to lease Measat-3a Ku-band capacity to Patra Telekomunikasi Indonesia, the operator announced Oct. 21.
    Patra will use the capacity to support its Aora TV DTH service in Indonesia. The agreement with PT Patra increases Aora’s number of DTH-supported platforms on the Measat-3/Measat-3a 91.5 degrees East neighborhood to five.
Aora, which commenced its nationwide broadcast activity in August 2008 with a 10-channel service featuring the 2008 Beijing Olympics, currently offers 25 channels. The broadcaster said it plans to increase its channel offering to 50 channels in the near future.
    MNC SkyVision CEO Rudy Tanoesoedibjo told Satellite News that broadcasters are confident in the Indonesian subscriber base. “I would say that Indonesia is the next big market for DTH in Asia, but the market requires a lot of education. … We are getting 80 percent of our new subscribers from direct sales, and this links back to educating the market. If you look at the size of the market, I think there are around 15 million households in the market that could take DTH services over the next five years.”
    Media Partners Asia (MPA) Executive Director Vivek Couto named Indonesia in a list of developing DTH markets with the potential to reach the size of neighbors in major markets. “The market for DTH pay-TV in [the] Asia-Pacific [region] is growing at a significant pace again, buoyed by large scale DTH deployment in India and robust growth in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Markets such as Japan and Korea are large for DTH but seeing flat growth, though platforms are also looking to build some sort of future by combining or partnering with IPTV.”
    Separately, Measat signed a deal with GlobeCast to distribute the Fashion One HD channel to the Asia-Pacific region via the Measat-3 satellite. The addition of Fashion One increases the number of HD channels on Measat’s HD video neighborhood to 14.

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