ASBU to Upgrade MENOS with Newtec Dialog

MDM5000 Satellite Modem. Photo: Newtec.

Newtec announced that the Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU) will use its Newtec Dialog platform technology for the upgrade of its satellite Multimedia Exchange Network over Satellite (MENOS).

Installed by Newtec in 2008, MENOS allows broadcasters to exchange multimedia content, including video and audio material, over satellite across several sites scattered across a large geographical area. The platform has continued to gain momentum, with an increasing number of member terminals and national deployments using MENOS and a growing volume of content being shared, including news, radio, television programs and sports.

Work to upgrade the architecture has already started, with MENOS Plus due to go live later in 2017. The new system, which is based on the Newtec Dialog multiservice broadcast solution, will create up to 50 percent additional capacity for High Definition (HD) exchanges, according to the company. Newtec will also enable HD mesh contributions to other MENOS Plus terminals. Additionally, the company will improve the quality of Fast News Gathering (FNG) content from 1 Mbps to 2 Mbps using the same space segment (Arabsat 5A). HD contributions will be enabled with Newtec’s new MDM5000 satellite modems.

“The upgrade is important as more and more users demand HD and Ultra-HD content, and with Newtec, we can provide the additional capacity required for this at no extra cost to our customers,” said Abdul Rahim Suleiman, ASBU’s director general.

According to the company, the Newtec MDM5000 is the first Digital Video Broadcasting-Second Generation Satellite Extension (DVB-S2X), high-throughput Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) modem, with a symbol rate ranging from 1 up to 133 Mbaud and coding from QPSK to 256APSK in the forward channel. It offers the choice of three return technologies: Multi-Frequency, Time Division Multiple Access (MF-TDMA); Single Channel Per Carrier (SCPC); and Newtec’s Cross-Dimensional Multiple Access (Mx-DMA) which combines SCPC efficiency with the flexibility of MF-TDMA.

ASBU will ultimately integrate MENOS Plus with the ASBU Cloud, which is currently being developed to enable organizations outside of Arabsat 5A coverage to exchange programs.