New European orbital slot to be activated

Analoguesat

This is a press release from Avanti Screenmedia:

Avanti to become international satellite broadcaster
and broadband supplier with launch of its own satellite.


Dateline: London - November 15, 2005.

Avanti, the market-leading provider of screenmedia services to businesses, has raised £25 million to complete the financing of the launch of a satellite.

The satellite will be used to turn Avanti into a vertically integrated international satellite broadcaster and broadband supplier. Each aspect of the value chain from core infrastructure to customer relationships will come under Avanti’s control and ownership. The Avanti satellite will be used to provide services such as broadband and High Definition Television (“HDTV”) services for broadcasters, consumers and businesses in 22 countries in Europe, as well as serving its own screenmedia customers.

The launch of the satellite exploits the license the company was awarded in August by OFCOM, the communications watchdog, which allocated it part of the radio spectrum and authorized it to occupy a broadcast satellite orbit position. The satellite will occupy the orbital position at 33.5ºW.

The new funding complements the award by the European Space Agency (“ESA”) of a contract worth approximately £24 million. ESA has given Avanti a Preliminary Authority to Proceed on this contract.

The new ESA contract provides approximately half of the cost of building a highly advanced small satellite in-line with ESA policy on R&D in the space sector. Avanti will take full ownership of the satellite once in orbit. The estimated cost of the launch in 2008 (including insurance) is £20m. The satellite will have a lifetime of at least 12 years.

The Board of Avanti also believes that the satellite project will address the digital divide problem identified by the European Commission, which predicts that large parts of the population in Europe will not be adequately served by terrestrial broadband communications. Ownership of the satellite by Avanti also reduces the cost of providing services such as broadband and screenmedia by removing suppliers from the value chain.

The Board also believes that there is a shortage of suitable satellite capacity, given the pending upgrade of digital television services to the HDTV format, which consumes four times as much bandwidth as ordinary digital TV.

Avanti expects to finalise the satellite procurement contract within a few weeks.

Commenting, David Williams, chief executive of Avanti, said: “Avanti is now the only fixed satellite owner/ operator in the UK. This opens up many new opportunities for us. There are strong synergies with our core businesses of satellite television broadcasting to businesses and broadband Internet services, since we will be able to offer triple play services from space – media, data and VoIP. However we expect to see major changes in the landscape of European broadcasting in the next ten years, driven by a shortage of capacity, the emerging HDTV standard and the proliferation of IPTV. This, we think, offers Avanti major opportunities in the direct to home market, which is obviously a far greater market than business tv. Avanti does not just want to be a satellite operator – we are already a media owner, and want to extend this model into consumer markets. Very few media companies own their own distribution infrastructure as well as the media they deliver, and it is even rarer to create a new satellite broadcast business so this feels like a once in a lifetime opportunity.”


Digisat 1 is planned for launch in 2008

Skip Channel

And two dishes are now allowed on most properties...

Analoguesat

Remember BSB - they owned & operated their own satellites. Look where they are now,

Skip Channel

But you weren't allowed two dishes back then! And Britain's appetite for multichannel TV is far larger. Plus, from what I can see, half this service seems aimed at the rest of Europe too - that'll be a bit of a safety net for Avanti.

Likvid

In Sweden we can have a 5 meter dish in your backyard if you wanted to.