NTL is to invest pounds50 million in broadcast services over the next four years, with an immediate commitment of pounds10 million. The money will be used in part to buy new SNG trucks and to develop its new playout facilities, but the focal point this year will be a new teleport located some 10 miles from its existing facility at Crawley Court. The teleport, situated at Morn Hill in Hampshire, will have 21 antennas by 2004 and will offer visibility from 69 degrees East to 302 degrees West. The site will be used for uplinks to Astra 2B, 2C and 2D, scheduled to launch this year and next year.

The development will vastly increase NTL’s uplink capability. According to Steve Holebrook, director of satellite and media services at NTL, some of the antennas will be used to provide Internet and telephony services to Asia and Africa. Crawley Court itself is still scheduled for further expansion, and NTL recently completed and opened a new master control room dedicated to occasional services at the facility. The master control room will also take control of NTL’s AC-1 link, used in the main for occasional services. The AC- 1 link connects to Vyvx’s network in the US.

Construction of the new teleport, started in August. According to Holebrook, it will be ready to operate in July. Holebrook said the existing teleport could probably accommodate one more year of growth, but NTL wanted to make sure it had plenty of spare capacity in time.

NTL has now secured a contract to provide playout facilities for ONrequest, the pay-per-view service planned by ONdigital and SDN and currently test-transmitting. NTL already provides a similar service for British Eurosport, which uses a studio facility at Langley. The British Eurosport signal is uplinked to Orion for distribution to cable headends while ONrequest is uplinked to Eutelsat W2. “We are now an integrated service provider,” said Holebrook, which could take customers through the whole process from the camera lens to the consumer. “Where we are positioning ourselves is [that] we can do the whole lot for you.”