Spacecom’s AMOS-5 Channels FRANCE-24 To African Neighborhoods

[SatNews] The satellite began commercial operations in January 2012 and is becoming a prime carrier of African satellite communications traffic in both broadcast and data services.

Spacecom (Tel Aviv Stock Exchange: SCC), operator of the AMOS satellite fleet, and SatLink Communications, a teleport and HD Playout Centre delivering content worldwide announced that AMOS-5 is now distributing FRANCE 24’s French and English channels to Africa. FRANCE 24 is now using the AMOS-5 Ku-band TV distribution platforms from SatLink at 17 degrees E to deliver its French channel to French-speaking Africa and its English channel to East and Central Africa. FRANCE 24 is the first news channel covering international current events from a French perspective. It broadcasts 24/7 on three channels, in French, in English and in Arabic, throughout the world. French, English and Arabic programming provide more than 255 million viewers with global broadcast news.

FRANCE 24 will be utilizing SatLink’s content distribution capabilities to AMOS-5 MCPC (Multi Channel Per Carrier) Ku-band platforms to allow them to effectively distribute their content easily to Direct to Home viewers at the French speaking and central Africa regions.  The teleport, which is strategically located at the cross roads of Europe, Africa and Asia, serves international broadcast clients around the world and is also used by FRANCE 24 to distribute content to the Asian market.

From its 17 degrees E orbital position, AMOS-5 provides powerful C-band and Ku-band beams for supplying broadcast and data services to the entire African continent. The satellite began commercial operations in January 2012 and is becoming a prime carrier of African satellite communications traffic in both broadcast and data services.

David Hochner, CEO of SatLink, commented, “The Central and Eastern African region is a key market for many international news broadcasters as it is seeing exponential growth and the audience is hungry for news content. This is why we are delighted that FRANCE 24 is leading the way by showing that it is possible to successfully distribute content to the DTH audience in its target market using our MCPC platforms on AMOS -5.”

“Our AMOS-5 broadcast neighborhood is growing and the addition of FRANCE 24 is an excellent step forward,” commented Amir Carmeli, Spacecom vice president for sales, West Europe. “As a premier multi-regional satellite operator, we are looking forward to bringing more channels to our extremely powerful TV platform in Africa.”