[Satellite Today 03-04-09] SES New Skies has contracted 36 MHz of capacity on the upcoming NSS-12 satellite to Detasad, a German-Saudi joint venture and provider of telecommunication and IT services.
    Detasad said it chose NSS-12 because of the spacecraft’s coverage range of the Middle East region as well as key parts of Europe. “It will ideally support our strategy to provide satellite services to our customers in the Middle East with optimized power/bandwidth solutions,” said Harald Stange, director of services at Detasad, in a statement.
NSS-12 is scheduled for operational service in the second half of 2009 and will replace the existing NSS-703 satellite at the orbital location of 57 degrees East.
    Separately, Detasad signed a multi-year contract for Ku-band capacity on Intelsat’s new satellite, IS-15, which will be located at 85 degrees East when it is launched later this year.
    “We chose to lease capacity on the IS-15 because in our view, it will be the highest performing satellite in the Middle East region. This contract will support our strategy to provide our clients satellite services with the best power and bandwidth solutions, offering flexible, high data rate satellite links using antennas that are as small as possible. We will also be able to support the latest modulation technologies such as DVB-S2, ACM and LDPC,” said Stange in a statement.
    Detasad became a distributor of Intelsat’s Network Broadband Global Maritime service under a separate contract signed with Intelsat in June 2008.