[Satellite News 12-17-10] SES Astra signed deals with Ukrainian state enterprise Ukrkosmos and Central European Media Enterprises (CME) that the satellite operator hopes will ramp up its presence in Ukraine, Bulgaria and Romania, SES Astra Vice President and General Manager Markin Kubacki told Satellite News.
    Kubacki said the deals were of great strategic importance to SES Astra’s strategy of increasing its cable reach and strengthening the attractiveness of its 31.5 degrees East orbital position. “We have introduced 31.5 degrees East as a new orbital position for Central and Eastern Europe with the aim to complement our 5 degrees East orbital position and to offer additional growth opportunities in this very dynamic region. Both CME and Ukrkosmos customers will help us to build a strong neighborhood on 31.5 degrees East and to further drive sales in the region,” he said.
    Through the contract with Ukrkosmos, SES Astra immediately will gain access to all of Ukrkosmos cable headends and terrestrial networks and achieve 100 percent cable coverage in Ukraine. Ukrkosmos’ channel portfolio includes state-owned UTR and Kultura. Since these two channels are subject to must-carry rules, cable operators are obliged to offer the two channels as part of their bouquet.
    “The capacity agreement with SES Astra will allow us to offer superior signal quality and coverage over Ukraine and optimise the distribution of our customer’s content to terrestrial and cable networks,” Ukrkosmos General Director Sergey Kapshtyk told Satellite News.
    SES Astra’s contract with CME will see the broadcaster become an anchor customer for SES Astra’s 31.5 degrees East orbital position. CME, which operates broadcasting, Internet and TV content businesses in six Central and Eastern European countries, leased a transponder at 31.5 degrees East for video distribution to cable headends in Romania and Bulgaria beginning in January.
     Central and Eastern Europe remain interesting markets for pay-TV and broadcasting, as low levels of pay-TV penetration and emerging middle classes throughout the region provide significant opportunities to grow. SES Astra sees CEE as a major growth opportunity, as the economic slowdown has had a minimal impact on the region.
“While commercial broadcasters were strongly affected by the slowdown of the advertising market, pay-TV operators even saw an uptake in their subscriber figures,” Kubacki said. “The impact on our business was thus limited but certainly stronger in Central and Eastern Europe then in other European markets. We now see these markets slowly recovering from the crisis and developing new dynamics, especially with the digital switchover coming closer in many markets and the introduction of new standards and technologies such as HD and 3-D.”
    However, the main digitalization challenges for SES Astra in the region also serve as opportunities, Kubacki said. “With satellite providing the best solution for the delivery of high-quality digital video signals direct to the home, we are confident that we can further leverage our market position in many Central and Eastern European countries. We offer DTH television as well as complementary solutions to digital terrestrial transmission via satellite, as we are convinced that a complete digitalization cannot be achieved without satellite. Digitalization via satellite can easily provide 100 percent digital coverage without the investment in expensive terrestrial infrastructure,” he said.