SES Sirius made its mark serving the Nordic region under the name Nordic Satellite AB, but the satellite operator has outgrown its original market and its name. Now the company hopes to expand its business in other regions, the company’s chief executive said.

“If you look at the footprint of our satellites and where we are active, we are no longer just a Nordic satellite provider,” SES Sirius CEO Per Norman told Satellite News. “We are in present in the Baltics, as well as several Eastern European countries like the Ukraine, Latvia and Romania for example. In Romania, we have offices and a local presence. I expect to see further growth in all of these Eastern European markets.”

In particular, Norman identified these markets as having a “very fast-growing broadcast market,” which he said increases the demand for capacity for new television channels. In addition to that, there is increased interest from not only Eastern European companies, but also Western European companies in general who are looking into this market.

“There are new opportunities in terms of a regional basis, where we have good coverage but not as many customers as we would like,” Norman said. “We also want to increase our presence in more markets.”

SES Sirius is expanding it satellite fleet to help meet the company’s growth targets. Earlier this year, the operator commissioned Lockheed Martin to manufacture the Sirius 4 satellite, which will provide replacement capacity for Sirius 2 and Sirius 3 in the Nordic and Baltic markets, as well as enhance coverage in Eastern Europe and Russia. Sirius 4 is scheduled to be launched in the first half of 2007 aboard a Russian Proton rocket.

The company may expand beyond Sirius 4, but Norman could not provide any concrete plans. “It is difficult to say when the next satellite after Sirius 4 will be,” he said. “It really depends on what demands of new capacity we will see after the launch of Sirius 4. Issues like what is going to happen with high-definition (HD) television and what is going to happen with the Eastern European markets will be factors that impact that decision. I think it is at least two years away before we have to make any kind of decision regarding a new satellite.”

The HD Opportunity

In addition to opening up new markets, Norman still sees opportunity in the mature markets it currently serves, primarily in offering high-definition (HD) TV services. Norman predicted that the offering of high-definition channels will replace offering a greater number of channels as the key differentiator of service and “it will be very important for satellite in the coming years to have HDTV as a good benchmark for premium services.”

Customer knowledge of HDTV is growing, and the only thing that is holding the market back is the availability of hardware, Norman said. “We are pretty close to seeing a commercial breakthrough,” he said. “I would say a lot of it refers to MPEG-4 boxes. As soon as you see any volumes in terms of MPEG-4 boxes, I would say that you are going to see a pretty quick launch of HDTV in the Nordic countries. Within the coming one to two years, it will also happen in the Baltic countries.

“I think we will have an even stronger position in Eastern Europe, and you will see more HDTV channels,” Norman said. “We intend to be very active in these areas. I think HDTV will happen pretty quickly in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. Hopefully, in 12 months, if HDTV has been successfully launched across Europe, it will start to happen in smaller countries. Scale and the number of households are also issues to be considered with the launch of HD services. I think you will HD in Eastern Europe in 2007.

Name Change

To mark this business shift, SES Sirius, which is owned by SES Astra (75 percent) and Swedish Space Corp. (25 percent), recently changed its name from Nordic Satellite AB.

The move beyond the Nordic region was “one of the reasons to remove the Nordic Satellite from our name,” Norman said. “Another reason is that we want to show the affinity to the SES group and the global connection that it gives us.”

–Mark Holmes

(Anna-Karin Modigh, SES Sirius, anna-karin.modigh@ses-sirius.com)