A letter FrOM tHe MANAGING DIreCtOrDear readers,In the shadow of the financial crisis, a number of activities are taking place in the media and satellite in-dustry. SES ASTRA has just positioned a new satellite with a capacity of 24 trans-ponders at 31.5° East to meet the grow-ing demand for satellite broadcasts in Eastern Europe. The SIRIUS team man-aged to secure the first four transpond-ers for its Russian customer Satgate, which will be using the capacity for inter-net services covering the entire CEE re-gion.SIRIUS has also recently signed an agreement with Discovery for further ca-pacity on SIRIUS 4, which they will use to expand in Eastern Europe.FSS capacity, which has been avail-able for many years at low prices, is now in scarce supply, and during the autumn all suppliers will experience a shortage of capacity for broadcasts of a more tem-porary nature, such as sporting events, news coverage, elections, etc.But activities are not only in progress in the east. If we look west of Sweden, at Denmark, we find that the process of preparing the population for the shut-down of the analogue terrestrial net-work is in full swing. Over the course of a single night, 31 October, the entire Danish terrestrial network will be digi-talised. Not in stages, as in Sweden, but overnight.Digitalisation offers a range of new opportunities for all media operators, and SES SIRIUS is naturally important in this context. We have a major role to play in marketing and providing informa-tion on satellite as the leading option for digital broadcasts - not least in terms of capacity, now that the market for HDTV seems to be showing explosive growth.So, in preparation for the transition to digital broadcasts in Denmark, we’ve made sure that we have a presence there so that we can listen and observe - quite simply so we can see what’s going on and market what we believe should be the obvious choice: satellite TV. You can read about this and much more on the following pages.Summer is already in full bloom and we’re heading towards the holiday sea-son we so well deserve after a long win-ter. I wish you all a truly pleasant sum-mer. Make sure you make the most of it!Personally, I’m going to buy a ham-mock, to go with the rounds of golf I’ll be playing …Håkan Sjödin, Managing Director, SES SIRIUS AB2
Denmark to shut
down analogue
terrestrial network
this autumn
While debate on the actual decision was largely non-existent, discussions on the choice of gatekeeper (Boxer won the tender in competition with Norwegian Telenor and Swedish MTG) and its position in the mar-ket have been more heated. Competitors consider that, through its 12-year gatekeep-er position in the terrestrial network, Boxer has attained a domineering position that risks inhibiting competition, something that politicians and Boxer repudiate.In any case, it can be no easy task for the Danish public and television viewers to keep abreast of the issue. The publicly financed information campaign ’The new TV signal’, however, aims to restore order in the chaos so that all the viewers con - cerned are aware of what will apply as of 1 November. ”In Denmark the transition to digital ter-restrial broadcasts is not going to be made gradually like in Sweden - it’s going to take place overnight. This makes major demands on everything working properly immedi-ately. On the other hand, we’ve been able to study and learn from the experiences of countries that have made the transition be-fore us. Sweden has definitely been an im-portant source of inspiration in this respect, and we’ve also been on study visits to the UK and US,” says Henrik Vejlgaard, project manager of ’The new TV signal’ campaign.Vejlgaard was one of the speakers at this year’s Digital TV Conference organised by BDM (Brancheforum Digitale Medier) in Copenhagen in mid-May together with the telecommunications association Teleteknisk selskab, which is part of IDA (Danish Society of Engineers), and other organisa-tions.”Another challenge is that there must be sufficient terrestrial boxes on the mar-ket. Unfortunately, the more advanced (and more expensive) boxes have been delayed (MPEG-4, which is necessary for viewers to see the three new channels that DR is launching on 1 November in the terrestrial network). Retail staff will play a very impor-tant role over the coming months until the analogue signal is shut down. Our call centre receives many calls from people looking for information, and if they have ex-tremely specific questions, we refer them to the retailers. The American authorities that we spoke to on our visit to the US told us that it’s absolutely crucial to get retailers on board where communication is concerned,” says Vejlgaard.What in your opinion should retailers do in this regard?”They should do what they always do. Good advice starts with good questions. It’s absolutely vital that they start by find-ing out what their customers need. ’What would you most like to be able to watch?’ is a good introductory question,” says Vejlgaard.And the role of retailers was something that Anders Appelqvist, CEO of electron-ics trade association Elektronikbranschen in Sweden, took up in his speech on experi-ences of digitalisation in Sweden.”We’re now focusing on training retail staff to become HDTV and Blue Ray special-ists, and it needs to be clear which shops offer more specific information on this tech-nology. I think it would be wise to introduce such an initiative in shops in the rest of the Nordic countries as well,” says Appelqvist, who also told us that sales of flat screen Henrik Vejlgaard, project manager of ’The new TV signal’ campaign.