SES Astra fulfills World Cup coverage demand

[BGonaSTICK]

SES ASTRA, an SES GLOBAL company (Euronext Paris and Luxembourg Stock Exchange: SESG), played an important and successful role in the content delivery and distribution of the 2006 FIFA World Cup™ hosted in Germany in June and July.

On the basis of a framework agreement concluded last year, SES ASTRA and T-Systems cooperated in providing a variety of transmission solutions and worldwide content delivery packages to help facilitate the TV coverage of the 2006 FIFA World Cup™ for a number of international broadcasters. These packages consisted of signal delivery, temporary satellite transponder capacity as well as uplink and downlink services. T-Systems is the business customer division of Deutsche Telekom and one of Europe's leading providers of information and communications technology.

The ASTRA satellite system, which reaches 107 million households across Europe, also served as a major hub for the distribution of TV coverage for the 2006 FIFA World Cup™, transmitting TV signals from ASTRA`s orbital positions at 19.2° East, 28.2° East and 23.5° East and serving more than 20 major TV operators and resellers across Europe and in Japan. Signals were also broadcast in High Definition (HD) format to operators in Germany, France, United Kingdom, Belgium and Japan.

“SES ASTRA has again benefited from its role as a leading satellite operator and from its international experience in high quality transmissions”, said Alexander Oudendijk, Chief Commercial Officer of SES ASTRA. “The transmission of the 2006 FIFA World Cup™ has shown that we are committed to maintain the highest standards in service and technology for our customers around the world.”

Source: SES Astra