Focus: Broadcasting

SES has signed a new capacity deal with a Direct-t0-Home (DTH) broadcaster in Asia, the company announced Oct. 5. Sirius TV, a brand of Smart Digital International, has signed a multi-year contract with SES to deliver a new bouquet of satellite TV channels across Malaysia. The Sirius Basic subscription package launched Oct. 1 with 13...

USSI Global has selected ST Engineering iDirect as a technology partner in its C-band transition, the companies announced Sept. 28. ST Engineering iDirect will be providing broadcast equipment including M6100 modulators, USS0212 redundancy switches, and FR0730 up and down converters. USSI Global helps broadcasters and cable and satellite networks deliver television programming. The company must...

SES is seeing encouraging take-up of its cloud-based services. The operator announced Sept. 15 that since the first quarter of this year, more than 60 channels have adopted SES’s cloud infrastructure. This trend is showing an increasing number of broadcasters and channel operators worldwide adopting SES’s Cloud Playout service to better manage their linear TV...

Faced with a steady decline in the price of their basic commodity, satellite operators have turned to vertical integration to drive efficiency savings and create new business models which capture more of the value chain. The price per unit of satellite bandwidth may be falling, but the revenue operators are able to earn from selling...

The Russian Satellite Communications Company (RSCC) is now serving the Brazilian TV market for the first time. Russia’s state-owned satellite operator announced Aug. 25 that it had signed a contract with one of the largest national television companies in Brazil for capacity on the Express-AM8 satellite to distribute Difusora channel to more than 3 million...

SiriusXM has ordered another Geostationary Orbit (GEO) satellite from Maxar Technologies, after the SXM-9 satellite order announced earlier this month. SXM-10, a high-powered digital audio radio satellite, will be built on Maxar’s 1300-class platform.  Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Maxar did not give an expected launch date for the satellite.  “Maxar has...

Vislink has closed on an $18.3 million acquisition of Mobile Viewpoint, in a deal the company said creates a “global live video powerhouse” that can address growing demand for internet video.  Vislink announced the close of the deal on Monday. Vislink, headquartered in Hackettstown, New Jersey, deals with the capture, delivery, and management of live...

Maxar Technologies has completed in-orbit testing for the SXM-8 satellite, and handed the spacecraft over to SiriusXM. The SXM-8 satellite was launched by SpaceX on June 6, 2021.   This satellite will deliver SiriusXM’s audio entertainment and information to consumers in the United States and will expand the company’s coverage area in Canada and the Caribbean....

SES has signed a new nine transponder capacity deal on its SES-8 satellite in India. The company announced July 29 it had entered into a multi-transponder agreement with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), a Central Public Sector Enterprise (CPSE) under Department of Space (DoS) based in Bengaluru, India. The capacity agreement on SES-8 at 95 degrees...

Telcos are moving towards digital services as they fight the commoditization of their connectivity services. This is one of the key findings of a new whitepaper “Mobile Carriers Accelerate Digital Services Play” by Docomo Digital, the international payments business of NTT Docomo, one of the world’s largest wireless operators. This move is being driven by...