SES World Skies has signed a multi-year, multi-million dollar capacity deal with Solomon Telekom, to extend its broadband services across the Solomon Islands, SES World Skies announced Nov. 4.
    SES World Skies will provide half a transponder on its NSS-9 satellite to enable Solomon Telekom to increase Internet and wireless access throughout the Melanesian country starting Jan. 1. The service will be deployed over the spacecraft’s West Hemi beam carrying access speeds up to 30 Mbps between Australia and the Solomon Islands capital city of Honiara.
    Separately, SES World Skies signed a multi-year agreement with MediaScape Inc. to provide an additional transponder of capacity on the NSS-11 satellite at the 108.2 degrees East orbital slot, increasing MediaScape’s transponder utilization on NSS-11 from two to three. The company will use the additional satellite capacity to distribute HDTV channels to households in the Philippines.
    “The addition of eight HD channels to the line-up of Cignal HD offers viewers in the Philippines a new TV standard that brightens up every television in households across the country. Cignal HD will offer a wide variety of programs to cover sports, lifestyle, kids, history and movies,” said Benjamin Fernandez, managing director of MediaScape, in a statement.