Eutelsat Communications, which has Spanish company Abertis Telecom as one of its main shareholders, has made a number of interesting strategic moves over the last year. While continuing to grow its primary fixed satellite services (FSS) business, the operator also ordered its first dedicated Ka-band satellite, Ka-Sat, to target the satellite broadband market as well as teamed up with rival SES Astra to form the Solaris Mobile joint venture to serve the mobile services market in Europe. Eutelsat CEO Giuliano Berretta discusses the company’s strategic moves and how he is positioning Eutelsat for the future.
Satellite Today: You had 49 high-definition (HD) channels broadcast on your fleet at the end of June. Has the growth in HD being slower than you anticipated, despite a lot of industry hype?
Berretta: Many observers were anticipating rapid and enormous growth of HD channels, while Eutelsat remained very prudent in our own predictions. The number of HD channels broadcasting through Eutelsat is actually slightly superior to our expectations. There are a number of factors that have clarified the environment for HD, notably the progressive infiltration into households of HD displays, and the emergence of Blu-Ray as the de facto standard for HD games and as a DVD player. The strength of this off-line content is creating expectations from consumers for HD broadcasts, and pay-TV operators are now responding by adding HD into their mix or launching all-HD platforms. Our second prediction was that we did not believe HD would only take off in Western Europe. We believed that new digital video markets in Central and Eastern Europe would also be early adopters and even kickoff in MPEG-4. A good example is n in Poland, which launched directly in MPEG-4 from our Hot Bird video neighborhood. Our own HD channel figures clearly show this trend. Of the 55 HD channels broadcasting today, half are addressing Western Europe through our premium video neighborhoods and half are broadcast via our major video neighborhoods addressing Eastern Europe, Turkey and Africa.
Satellite Today: How many HD channels do you expect to have at the end of June 2009?
Berretta: It is difficult to predict. We are still in the very early stage of the market, which means that even though the long term potential of HD is clear, the precise trajectory through which we will reach this stage is not clear-cut. When the market has really taken off it will be easier to project from one year to the next. One thing I can tell you is that the acceleration we saw in the first six months is continuing.
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