Arabsat and Emerging Markets Communications (EMC) have signed a strategic commercial agreement to utilise the new Badr-7 satellite currently under manufacture and expected to be launched by end 2015.
The satellite is to be located on the Arabsat’s premium orbital location (Hot Spot) at 26 East that covers more than 30 Million free-to-air households, 400 Standard Definition TV Channels and 50 High Definition TV channels
According to this agreement, EMC has designed and acquired on an exclusive basis, a hosted payload to be carried onboard Arabsat Badr-7 Satellite to operate the first ever multi-purpose Ka-band hosted payload covering 34 countries in the EMEA and Central Asia regions.
The satellite is to be located on the Arabsat’s premium orbital location (Hot Spot) at 26 East that covers more than 30 Million free-to-air households, 400 Standard Definition TV Channels and 50 High Definition TV channels catering to viewers in Africa, Central Asia, Middle East and Europe.
Designed from the ground up, this new EMC hosted payload for the entire Ka-band spectrum is based on multiple EMC patents and provides high throughput data rates supporting multiple applications for the consumer and carrier markets ranging from two-way broadband services directly to the home, wireless distribution for 3G and LTE operators directly to the tower and in-country video distribution for regional TV content making this payload reportedly ideal for the emerging consumer triple play over satellite market.
EMC CEO Abel Avellan commented: “Previous generation of Ka-band High Throughput Satellites (HTS) were designed to support only mass-consumer basic internet services with little or no flexibility to support other key connectivity needs. Our patented payload configurations not only delivers a large amount of Gbps on a key and vital TV neighborhood in the EMEA region, with several times the throughput of what traditional satellites can offer today, it also provides total flexibility to serve multiple high growth markets and verticals which was not possible to address until now.”
Arabsat CEO Khalid Balkhyour commented; “Arabsat Badr-7 satellite with its new payload will generate new era of convergence between satellite communication and TV broadcasting at one orbital position.
“We are honored to team with EMC in this project to come up with unique satellite configuration that serves the interest of both parties and the population of the area. Our common commercial partnership with EMC, by signing this agreement will bring the satellite communication, data distribution and TV broadcasting a new dimension.”
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