Eutelsat has signed a new capacity deal with one of Switzerland’s largest public broadcasters. SRG SSR has signed a deal concerning a 33MHz transponder on the Hot Bird 7A satellite, which was launched late last week by an Ariane 5 ECA booster. This new lease doubles the capacity used by Switzerland’s public broadcasting organisation, which has been transmitting via a transponder on Eutelsat’s Hot Bird 3 satellite since 1997.

The new deal will enable SRG SSR to substantially improve the quality of the images it broadcasts, doubling the bitrate of its video signals to deliver DVD quality to all Swiss homes via cable or direct-to-home (DTH). Today, 80 per cent of Switzerland’s 3.5 million television homes are cabled and 300,000 are equipped for DTH reception. The phasing-out of analogue terrestrial TV should increase the number of satellite DTH homes to 500,000.