Asia Broadcast Satellite (ABS) will acquire Mabuhay Satellite Corp. (MSC), ABS announced Nov. 6.
    ABS will gain MSC’s Agila-2 satellite, built by Space Systems/Loral  and launched in August 1997. The spacecraft carries 24 standard C-band and 6 extended C-band transponders covering Asia from India to Philippines; Japan to Indonesia; and a C-band spot beam over Hawaii to provide connectivity to the United States. Agila-2 also has 24 Ku-band transponders covering the Philippines, coastal China, Taiwan and Hong Kong providing capacity for TV distribution, DTH and VSAT services.
    ABS will also gain MSC’s Subic Space Center, a satellite communications facility in the Philippines providing full satellite operations, payload and client monitoring, tracking, telemetry and control services, and a full network operations center.
    In July, ABS announced plans to buy the Koreasat-2 satellite, and in June, unveiled details of its new ABS-2 satellite, which will have up to a total of 78 C-band, Ku-band and Ka-band transponders across eight different beams.