Orange Romania launches TV service with GlobeCast on ASTRA

Tuesday, June 11th, 2013
SES S.A logo

LUXEMBOURG & PARIS — GlobeCast and SES S.A. (NYSE Paris:SESG)(LuxX:SESG) announced today that they are providing services to Orange Romania for the launch of a high quality satellite Direct-to-Home TV package this month. The package will use multiple transponders on ASTRA’s 31.5 degrees East orbital position and will be broadcast in the DVB-S2 and MPEG4 technical standards. GlobeCast will provide contribution, encryption and encoding for Standard Definition and High Definition channels in the package.

Orange Romania will launch the new TV package to complement its existing mobile service, enabling the company to offer full multi-device communication services to its customers. Orange Romania booked this service through GlobeCast, which is providing a complete solution to bring Orange Romania’s channels to the point of uplink and prepare them for broadcast on capacity that GlobeCast has leased from SES.

Jean-Francois Fallacher, Chief Executive Officer of Orange Romania, said: “Today Orange Romania is ready to provide high quality television services and to offer our Romanian customers truly attractive packages. Orange TV means the highest number of HD TV channels, the best satellite beam strength and coverage, dedicated customer care, multiscreen access, a smaller and efficient dish and other remarkable features that will allow us to offer an amazing TV experience. All these were brought to life with Orange Group’s expertise and solid partnerships we developed with world renowned companies in the TV industry.”

Philippe Fort, Chief Operating Officer of GlobeCast, said: “Our offices worldwide collaborated to ensure a full technical solution for GlobeCast’s customer, Orange Romania, beginning with reception of the channels from Bucharest and ending with handoff to our partner SES for uplink to their powerful satellite. We are proud of the result and will continue to ensure excellent quality of service on the platform, leading to a high quality experience for the viewer.”

Ferdinand Kayser, Chief Commercial Officer of SES, said: “Telecommunication operators increasingly invest in content distribution in order to complement their existing services. This agreement shows the growing importance of satellite as a technical infrastructure for linear television packages of telecommunication operators. In addition to its unrivalled technical reach, satellite offers a fixed cost structure that is not dependent on the number of households receiving a TV service. We are delighted that Orange Romania decided to launch its new service via ASTRA. This confirms the leading role that SES plays in Central and Eastern Europe and shows that our orbital slot 31.5 degrees East is becoming a new hot spot in this region.”