Albania's DigitAlb Pay-TV Platform Extends to 2020 its Eutelsat Satellite Capacity

PARIS — DigitAlb, Albania’s leading pay-TV platform today announced it has secured its satellite resources for digital broadcasting with Eutelsat Communications (Euronext Paris: ETL) to June 2020. The company has extended for an extra three years its contract with Eutelsat for five transponders on satellites operating at its 16degrees East video neighbourhood.

Launched in December 2004, the DigitAlb pay-TV platform broadcasts a variety of Albanian and international channels, and closely cooperates with the sports package, SuperSport Albania for coverage of premium football and basketball games as well as Grand Prix races. High-Definition is a strong element, with the Premium HD package comprising eight HD channels, in addition to 54 premium channels and five SuperSport channels. The platform has more than 300,000 Direct-to-Home subscribers both in Albania and across Europe, and reaches a further 100,000 homes via Albania’s Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) network, which retransmits channels delivered to towers by DigitAlb’s Eutelsat capacity.

Alban Jaho, CEO of DigitAlb, said: “This new agreement at Eutelsat’s 16 degrees East position secures the qualitative DTH broadcasting of DigitAlb for a long time, which is a very important step for the future. We have a brilliant opportunity to launch new HD channels, and a general improvement of our service to subscribers. Very soon, DigitAlb will be broadcasting more MPEG4 channels than in MPEG2, increasing the efficiency of bandwidth utilisation. We are confident that the successful cooperation between our companies will contribute to a continued bright future for digital broadcasting in the region.”

Andrew Wallace, Eutelsat’s Chief Commercial Officer, responded: “DigitAlb’s long-term commitment to our 16 degrees East neighbourhood further anchors this position as the reference point for digital broadcasting in the Balkans. We are delighted to accompany the expansion of our pay-TV clients and to meet their evolving capacity needs, including their rapid transition into an HD environment.”