VIA SATELLITE: What is threatening satellite’s relevance in the market?
ANTONOVICH: One big trend is that everything is going to be mandated as an IP delivery over time. That’s going to drive different kinds of models for how people want to do business over satellite. Today, we still tend to think of satellite and television as a linear process, but increasingly it’s becoming a non-linear, file-based kind of business. The consumer at home doesn’t see it, but when it comes to creating that content and delivering it back to stations and networks, it’s increasingly file based. Eight years ago at the NAB show, there might have been Hewlett-Packard and IBM and a few computer geeks, but they were cloistered away because no one knew quite what to do with them. Today, there is a different conversation about how people are using computing power and IP protocol to do virtually everything. What was a curiosity has now become a necessity. Our systems need to adapt and keep up.
VIA SATELLITE: With the growing demand for bandwidth, are you finding it harder to secure transponder space to sell?
ANTONOVICH: We source in three ways. We make long-term transponder lease commitments, typically back-to-back with our end users. We also source capacity under long-term minimum-volume "run of fleet" commitments for our occasional use business. We source some capacity from customers and clients who have unsold or unused capacity and just need our help to market it. So every day, we are in the buy, sell and broker end of the business. And every market is different. North America is awash in C-band capacity, Ku-band is modestly tight, while Africa/Middle East inventory of any kind, even inclined orbit capacity, is in very short supply.
VIA SATELLITE: How far in advance are your customers having to secure space?
ANTONOVICH: For a third of our business, we love the "need-it-right-now" requirements. That’s how our occasional use business operates. Virtually everything is booked within three days of air except for long-form sports. We thrive on that. For people making long-term, fulltime commitments, the transaction cycle can be days, weeks or months. We do live in the here and now, and those are markets where we spend a lot of time with our customers and deliver real value.
VIA SATELLITE: What regions represent your biggest demand?
ANTONOVICH: The Middle East and Africa are white hot with capacity incredibly scarce, and it takes creativity in order to find any — knowing who is sitting on bandwidth they haven’t consumed yet and on what terms they might part with it. Some holders have long term plans, but they will be willing to lease it out on a short-term basis. It’s a question of knowing what questions to ask. That’s one of our advantages. We have 30 years of experience in negotiating contracts and leases. We understand the terms and conditions we can achieve for our clients with the carriers that others may not.
Email
Comments
Print
Reuse
