- Comsat shareholders have approved the company’s proposed merger with Lockheed Martin. Approximately 99 per cent of the total votes cast were in favour of the merger, representing over 74 per cent of Comsat’s total outstanding shares. Lockheed Martin has agreed to buy up to 49 per cent of Comsat’s outstanding common stock at a price of $45.50 per share in cash.
- Loral Space & Communications has leased Apstar IIR’s transponder payload from APT Satellite company Limited, Hong Kong. The satellite covers the Asia/Pacific region and in effect replaces launch failed Orion 3. Loral Skynet said it will use 27 C-band and 16 Ku-band transponders for the craft’s remaining life. Apstar IIR was built Space Systems/Loral using the FS0-1300 bus, and launched on October 17 1997, with a life of 15 years. Located at 76.5 degrees East, Apstar IIR covers a region that includes Asia, Europe, Africa, and Australia. The bulk of the funding for the lease is covered by the insurance from the Orion 3 failure. The contract value is reportedly more than US$300 million.
- UK programmer Flextech will launch its health-themed digital channel early next year. Living Health will be on air 18 hours a day as part of the BSkyB digital TV platform, and on digital cable.
- The UK’s Pace Micro Technology has won a contract to supply digital set top boxes to Israel’s Yes broadcasting company. Yes, which plans to launch Israel’s first DBS platform at the end of the year, has ordered 75,000 boxes from Pace, which will include a News Corp-supplied conditional access system and API.
- Bollywood for You (B4U), a south-Asian premium movie channel starts transmission in digital on August 26 (channel 667 on Sky Digital). Cost will be Pounds 9.99 a month (or Pounds 12.99 if combined with Sony Entertainment TV).
- The Adult Channel and Playboy TV will start a joint subscription service on Sky Digital on September 1. The schedule calls for 2000-0000 to be Playboy TV, and 0000-0400 will be The Adult Channel.
- Telecom Italia subsidiary Telespazio and Telemar, the market leader for supplying services and equipment for the nautical sector, have signed an agreement for marketing Orbcomm’s satellite communication services in Italy. According to the terms of the agreement, Telemar will offer customers the possibility of accessing a special satellite based e-mail service (known as ‘Sea-mail’) as well as a series of services which include marine weather forecasts and the possibility of activating alarms and the remote control of the craft. According to Telespazio, this agreement represents "only the first step of a series of activities aimed at the promotion of the Orbcomm system".
- Investment analysts at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter have given Canal Plus an ‘underperform’ rating in expectation that the French pay-TV company will announce a small first half net loss of about Fr90 million (Pounds 9 million). Although Canal Plus’ subscriber numbers were in line with expectations, the subscribers to the core Canal Plus channel fell slightly for the full half year, reversing an increase of 11,300 seen in the first quarter. Morgan Stanley noted that subscriber numbers in most of the key markets remained fairly static, although some improvement was seen in Poland. Morgan Stanley expects the company to post a pre-exceptional loss of Euro5 million for the year as a whole, although the sale of 5.25 per cent of its stake in Spanish pay-TV operator Sogecable as a result of the latter’s flotation in July netted it a Euro102 million (Pounds 67 million) profit, putting the company back into the black for the year as a whole.
- Lockheed Martin/Arianespace-backed Ellipso has signed an agreement with Ukraine’s Ukrspace to provide services to the country. Ellipso plans to use satellites in elliptical orbit to provide data and satellite navigation services at low cost, and Ukraine is seen as the kind of market it is best designed to serve.
- UG Radio, the German environment and health news pay-radio station, which has been broadcasting a free-to-air trial since mid-April on the ADR platform has been forced to encrypt. According to a spokesperson, its licence obliged the channel to encrypt its signal on August 1. It was planned that the DM99/month (Pounds 33) subscription channel, aimed at doctors’ waiting rooms, acquired the ADR encryption system from the former pay-radio service DMX Europe which closed its European operation in July 1997.
