Tom Choi, CEO, Asia Broadcast Satellite

Via Satellite: Given the availability of low-cost capacity, do you expect pricing pressures to continue in the region?

Choi: The Asia-Pacific region will continue to suffer from pricing pressure due to the continual investments in satellite capacity by new national and commercial operators. The emergence of the newly merged Chinese satellite operator (created by the merger of SinoSat and ChinaSat) along with their new satellites has resulted in a loss of capacity to both AsiaSat and APT Telecommunications. Both Indonesian satellite operators will be launching new and larger satellites in the next three years. They will be both adding significant amount of Ku-band capacity over Southeast Asia. ProtoStar will be launching two satellites in 2008 and 2009, and VinaSat just successfully launched their new satellite VinaSat-1. … Ku-band over China and C-band over Asia will continue to be under pricing pressure for many years to come.

Via Satellite: NSR analyst Patrick French, wonders where your growth is going to come from after adding a second satellite. How do you answer that?

Choi: Aside from ABS-2 which we are feverishly working on to co-locate at 75 degrees East with ABS-1, we are in the midst of seeking an orbital position for the expansion of our fleet and are engaged in multiple discussions with various operators and governmental organizations. Thus far, we have not concluded any agreements, but we have some anchor customers already in hand for another position and hope to release [a request for proposal] for ABS-3 sometime late 2008.

Via Satellite: How important is it to be at the cutting edge when bringing new satellites to the region?

Choi: Not including markets of India, Russia, China and Japan, the investments in AsiaSat-5, VinaSat-1, Intelsat-15, Measat-3A, ST-2, Protostar 1 and 2, Telstar-10R, Palapa-D and Telkom-3 as well as ABS-2 will represent over $2.2 billion of new satellite hardware being launched into geostationary orbit over the Asia-Pacific region in the next three years. Fortunately for ABS, we will not have to compete with all of these satellites, as ABS-2 will be serving markets in capacity-constrained areas of the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa as well as the Asia-Pacific region.
Almost all of the newly planned satellites, including ABS-2, will use traditional transponder bentpipe technologies. I don’t believe that we will see any new investments in cutting edge technology such as IPStar in the near future. Cutting-edge technology investments sometimes tend to cut both sides.

Via Satellite: Given the availability of low-cost capacity, do you expect pricing pressures to continue in the region?

Via Satellite: NSR analyst Patrick French, wonders where your growth is going to come from after adding a second satellite. How do you answer that?

Via Satellite: How important is it to be at the cutting edge when bringing new satellites to the region?

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