[Satellite Today – 6-19-08] AsiaSat has signed a highly significant capacity deal with one of the India’s largest media companies, the company said June 19. The satellite operator has signed a deal with the Essel Group, one of India’s largest media enterprises with diversified interests in broadcasting (Zee TV), DTH (Dish TV) and Cable Networking (WWIL) operations for the use of multiple C-band transponders on AsiaSat 4 for a new digital Headend-in-the-Sky (HITS) delivery platform to distribute pay TV signals to all cable operators, serving millions of cable homes throughout India.
    Through this platform on AsiaSat 4, cable operators can receive up to 150 digital television channels which will give a great impetus to the digitalisation of the cable networks in India. Headend-in-the-Sky (HITS) is a delivery model that allows cable operators to sell a readily encrypted high quality digital package of channels received from a single satellite to their subscribers.
In other AsiaSat news, the operator announced June 18 that it had signed a capacity deal with Chitkara Technologies Ltd (Chitkara) to supply Chitkara with AsiaSat 2’s C-band transponder capacity for the launch of a new television channel called ‘CUBE 3’ across India. This new channel, scheduled for service launch in July, will be a free to air city centric television service broadcasting in Punjabi language.