NHK, Japan’s national public broadcaster, signed a deal with Eutelsat under which NHK will lease a full 36 MHz Ku-band transponder on Eutelsat’s Atlantic Bird 3 satellite throughout February 2006, Eutelsat said. NHK will use the capacity to carry high definition coverage of the 2006 Winter Olympic Games from Turin, Italy.

“Covering a sports event of this scale implies a need to be in the right place at the right time in order to share real-time the emotion of the moment with our community of viewers,” said Eiichi Kashino, senior producer of NHK News. “To meet this challenge, Eutelsat will work with us on a daily basis to secure the best conditions at Turin 2006 in terms of quality, security and speed of reaction so that [the high definition] images can be delivered to our studios the moment they are filmed.”