[Satellite TODAY Insider 01-19-11] SES Astra has entered the Bulgarian pay-TV market through a deal with DTH operator Satellite BG, SES Astra announced Jan. 17.
    Satellite BG will use three transponders at SES Astra’s 23.5 degrees East orbital position for broadcasting Satellite BG’s channel portfolio to TV homes across Bulgaria starting in February. The offer will consist of more than 70 channels, including HD channels and all major public and commercial channels in Bulgaria.
    SES Astra Vice President and Chief Regional Officer Martin Ornass-Kubacki told Satellite Today Insider that the deal will help SES build its technical reach and open up a new growth market for its products and services. This “demonstrates that our 23.5 degrees East orbital position is one of the most attractive hot spots for the whole region, enabling us to expand our technical reach and to establish our presence in Central and Eastern Europe. Together with the contract recently signed with CME for cable contribution in Romania and Bulgaria via 31.5 degrees East, the agreement with Satellite BG represents another milestone in our Central and Eastern European growth story,” he said.
    Bulgaria, with a population of about 7.5 million, is becoming a lucrative emerging market for pay-TV. The region’s DTH market began to see movement when Vivacom launched DTH services in the country last year with channels based on Intelsat satellites. “We see large potential in the Bulgarian market in particular due to the fact that there are still 800,000 analog TV households. From what we observed in the past years, satellite reception has been constantly growing, while we saw a significant decrease in terrestrial and cable reception. Today, satellite has a market share of almost 60 percent among all digital infrastructures,” Ornass-Kubacki said.
    It will be interesting to watch whether markets in Eastern Europe such as Bulgaria can sustain a number of DTH operators as a number of DTH operators have emerged in recent years. The region also has suffered adverse economic conditions, which could make it harder for pay-TV to make an impact, according to Ornass-Kubacki.
    “The economic crisis has probably hit Central and Eastern Europe harder then Western Europe. Nonetheless, the satellite sector has been quite resilient to the downturn, which was due to the long-term duration of contracts and the positive effects of the crisis on the pay-TV business, which had to do with the fact that people in times of crisis tend to watch more television. We now see markets in Central and Eastern Europe really recovering from the crisis and new ventures such as Satellite BG start to accelerate.  Bulgaria is a market that was hit hard by the crisis, but is also gaining new dynamics,” he said.

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