Nilesat 201 ordered

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Cairo-based Nilesat has ordered its next-generation satellite, from Thales Alenia space, and with Arianespace as its launcher. Exact terms were not revealed, but the satellite will be Nilesat’s largest and come equipped with Ka-band transmission.

Salah Hamza, chief technology officer of Nilesat, said: “The build of Nilesat 201 has already started, with Thales Alenia. Thales was successful in its bid at the end of the day, and additionally benefited over satellite builders like Orbital Science because of our need for the satellite to carry four Ka-band as well as 24 Ku-band transponders. Ariane will launch the satellite, and the plan is to launch around May 2010.”

The date is longer off than Nilesat had first planned, especially given that its own capacity is long-exhausted, and there is only one full transponder on its leased Eutelsat craft yet to be illuminated. Indeed, its is likely that Eutelsat, with Nilesat’s full blessing, will move its old Hot Bird 3 satellite to a co-located position with Nilesat 101 and 102 in order to guarantee continuity of service. Hamza was visiting Paris today, June 3, for these and other discussions with Eutelsat.

One aspect of TV that Nilesat doesn’t have to worry about too much just yet is HDTV. Take-up by broadcasters has been non-existent (other than a few experimental transmissions), and Hamza says his major clients are talking about summer 2009 at the earliest for capacity. “It is difficult for pay-TV players to justify the major expense of HDTV when their revenues prospects are so poor,” he said. MPEG-4 receivers are still not available, nor supported with HD transmissions.

Hamza, speaking at the Arab Advisors Group media and telecoms conference in Amman, said pay-TV operations in the Middle East were struggling to make headway locally. He said with the proliferation of free-to-air channels in the Arab world, with many now showing first-run movies and American series, as well as high-quality sports, it was increasingly difficult for pay-TV channels to make any positive progress. “MBC2 is now offering first showings of material that up until recently you would only have seen on pay-TV,” he said.

Rotana, a music and movies bouquet operated by Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, is also active in this area, currently showing first-run Fox movies and about to extend that relationship into high-profile Fox series. Prince al-Waleed is an investor in News Corp. “We are adding customers all the time, our latest is offering what they promise to be high-quality Arabic-language drama, and movies,” said Hamza. “We are adding channels like this all the time, and each newcomer places fresh pressure on pay-TV. The introduction of Al Jazeera Sports, which is spending heavily to secure fresh content, doesn’t help pay TV.”

Hamza added that Arab Radio & Television (ART) still leads the trio of pay-TV operators in terms of overall subscriber numbers, but he stressed that the two other pay-TV platforms might still be ahead in ARPU numbers owing to their higher subscription levels. ART is known to be seeking more national soccer coverage for this upcoming season. Showtime retains exclusive regional TV rights to the English premiership soccer games.


Source: Rapid TV News