AGS Awarded AFRTS Contract

Americom Government Services (AGS), a subsidiary of SES Americom, won a contract from the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service to launch a new Pentagon Channel that will broadcast all kinds of infotainment – including information aimed at forces overseas — to Pentagon employees, military and federal personnel, and other interested U.S. consumers. Programming will be broadcast from the Pentagon to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration‘s Goddard Space Flight Center, where the signal is then uplinked and delivered via AGS’ terrestrial satellite communications service facilities and SES Americom’s satellite capacity. All programming will be in the public domain, and if you can point your satellite dish to the AMC-1 satellite at 103 degrees West longitude, you will have access to the new service. A Pentagon spokesman told Satellite Today that the Pentagon is working with cable operators to carry the channel as well.

AGS will manage the end-to-end solution, including the uplink, the fiber, the interconnection and the space segment for the nationwide channel. Financial terms were not disclosed.