SES Astra hooked up a deal with German company T-Systems to help broadcasters with their coverage of the World Cup, soccer’s premier international tournament, which Germany is hosting in 2006. The deal will allow TV stations throughout the world can now order full-fledged solutions from T-Systems to broadcast their sports coverage of the event via satellites of the SES Global fleet.

The two companies are bundling their services into the “Content Delivery Worldwide” package. It consists of signal delivery, satellite transponder capacity, as well as uplink and downlink services. TV broadcasters will be able to transmit football coverage from the respective soccer stadiums to the International Broadcasting Center (IBC) in Munich and on to their studios anywhere in the world.

Alexander Oudendijk, senior vice president and chief commercial officer of SES Astra, noted: “By delivering and distributing the World Cup broadcasts in standard definition and state-of-the-art HDTV to TV networks worldwide, T-Systems and SES are making sure that billions of TV viewers all over the world will not miss a single goal. We are delighted to have T-Systems as the perfect partner for providing this technical service.”