British communications infrastructure and media services company Arqiva has signed a new lease with Eutelsat for additional capacity that will be used to expand Arqiva’s occasional use satellite services.

   Arqiva will take up an additional 36MHz of capacity on one Eutelsat 7A transponder to obtain enhanced overall coverage of Europe and specific coverage of the Middle East, Turkey and Russia. 

   Eutelsat CCO Jean-François Leprince-Ringuet said the deal will help Arqiva better manage its global delivery of live and special events including sports, news and entertainment to its fleet of SNG trucks and more than 80 Earth stations.

   Arqiva Commercial Sales Director Barrie Woolston added that the enhanced occasional use capability would help the company meet projected demand. “As our occasional use business continues to grow we regularly review our satellite coverage and capacity to ensure we are best meeting the needs of our customers,” Woolston said in a statement. “Taking additional capacity on Eutelsat 7A significantly reinforces our occasional use capability, enabling us to offer customers better coverage, more capacity and access to a thriving antenna community via the already popular Eutelsat 7A satellite.”

   Eutelsat also finalized a deal in Norway that should bring additional business to its high-throughput Ka-Sat satellite after the operator admitted in its latest financial report that delays in its Ka-band rollout strategy have impacted its year-end projections.

   Eutelsat’s Skylogic subsidiary signed a distribution agreement with Internet service provider Direct Connect to sell its Tooway satellite broadband service in Norway. The agreement enables Direct Connect to offer Eutelsat’s Tooway consumer broadband service via the Ka-sat satellite to the most rural areas of Norway. Ka-Sat entered commercial service in May 2011 with total capacity of more than 70 gigabits-per-second. The satellite forms the cornerstone of Eutelsat’s new satellite infrastructure, which includes eight main satellite gateways across Europe connected to the Internet by a fiber backbone ring.

   In a statement, Direct Connect CEO Jan-Tore Dannemark said the triple play-ready Ka-Sat service would complement his company’s reputation for providing radio wave broadband to rural communities.

   “The ability to offer Tooway satellite broadband is an exciting opportunity to provide high-speed services to the rural communities of Norway, which we have to date been unable to serve by traditional line-of-sight technologies such as radio wave,” said Dannemark.