SatNews

Satellite Industry Intelligence Since 1983

ORBITZ

  • Delivery — Arqiva has used its Content Delivery Network to distribute the 2008 Palme d’Or winning ‘Entre Les Murs’ to Circuit George Raymond (CGR), one of France’s largest cinema chains. Working in partnership with Arts Alliance Media, Arqiva successfully delivered the full cinema package via the Intelsat 905 satellite direct to the library server at CGR Cinema’s megaplex site in Villenave d’Ornon, Bordeaux, France. The 216 GB file was transmitted and loaded onto the server without any operator intervention.

  • Business — Office des Postes et Telecommunications of French Polynesia (OPT) has signed a multi-transponder contract for capacity on Intelsat’s new satellite, IS-18. The contract with Intelsat, which spans the 15-year expected life of the satellite, expands the services currently provided to OPT on Intelsat’s IS-701 satellite. Intelsat designed the Ku-band beam on IS-18 to provide coverage of all of French Polynesia. The Ku-band beam’s broader footprint also reaches the Cook Islands. OPT expects to use Ku-band capacity on the IS-18 satellite for its domestic DTH service and to offer VSAT and Internet services to its outer islands in the South Pacific.

  • Moving On Up — EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ: SATS) and its EchoStar Satellite Services will be providing extensive satellite capacity, event coordination, and monitoring services from more than 50 Ku-band satellite transponders to a large majority of U.S. and international television news and broadcast organizations during the 2008 U.S. elections. On election day, EchoStar’s Satellite Access Centers located at the Digital Broadcast Transmission facilities in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Gilbert, Arizona, will manage more than 300 independent signal paths to dozens of television news outlets across the United States. Using uplink trucks and affiliate TV stations, networks can send and receive local live election coverage via satellite.

  • Moving On Up — Intelsat, Ltd. has appointed Mr. Peter Ostapiuk as the Company’s Regional Vice President, North America Cable and Emerging Media, effective immediately. Peter will be serving in the role previously held by Tim Jackson, who is now serving as Intelsat’s Vice President of Media Product Management. Peter will be responsible for managing Intelsat’s sales efforts for the North American cable television and emerging media markets. Peter has 16 years of experience in sales, 14 of them spent in the telecommunications and satellite industry. Prior to joining Intelsat, Peter was with Scientific-Atlanta and Cisco for 11 years in various international and domestic sales management roles.

  • Acquisition — Numerex Corp. has acquired Ublip Inc., a privately-held machine-to-machine (M2M) software and services company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The Ublip infrastructure and software enable the rapid creation of web-based M2M applications. When coupled with existing Numerex network technology and infrastructure, these apps will provide a resilient and reliable hosting environment for M2M solutions. Numerex’s strategy of simplifying the deployment process is an important key to sustainable growth in the industry. Typically, application developers must identify hardware (radio modules, servers), understand and select wireless networks, build communications software, and the front-end web application. Ublip ‘Foundation‘ technology and software simplifies and ‘jumpstarts’ the application development process, and has the capacity to support several different devices, wireless networks, and protocols.

  • Business — ONDAS Media S.A., the satellite radio company for Europe, has announced a commercial agreement with BMW Group to install satellite radio receivers in that firm’s vehicles in Europe. In the future, this will allow BMW’s customers to receive the programming of ONDAS Media’s Satellite Radio throughout Europe. ONDAS Media’s made an announcement earlier this year that the Company is to also supply and install satellite radio receivers in Nissan and Infiniti vehicles.

  • Moving On Up — John Howe, who is currently Thales U.K.’s Vice-Chairman, will be retiring at the end of January 2009 after 8 years in that position. As a result of this retirement, Victor Chavez has been appointed to the role of Deputy CEO for Thales U..K in addition to his current respon­sibilities for Business Development, Sales and Marketing. Victor will report directly to Alex Dorrian, CEO Thales U.K.. Sam Keayes is appointed Vice President – External Affairs and Strategy for Thales U.K., expanding on his currently role as U.K. Strategy Director. John Howe will continue to support the company, taking up the position of Non-Executive Director of the U.K. Advisory Board in January 2009, reporting to Lord Roger Freeman, Chairman.