100,000 subscribers for Georgia's MagtiSat

MagtiSat, Georgia’s first domestic direct-to-home (DTH) satellite platform broadcast via ASTRA, celebrates its second birthday with more than 100,000 customers across the country and 3 new in-house digital TV channels exclusively available to MagtiSat subscribers

TBILISI/LUXEMBOURG — SES S.A. (NYSE Euronext Paris and Luxembourg Stock Exchange: SESG) and MagtiCom, a mobile and telecommunications company in Georgia, announced today that after 2 years of operating MagtiSat, the first domestic DTH platform in Georgia, the company already has more than 100,000 subscribers and their number is constantly growing. MagtiSat is broadcast by ASTRA’s 1G satellite (31.5 degrees East).

To mark the second year of its successful operations, MagtiSat has launched 3 new in-house cinema channels—“Magti Hit”, “Magti Kino” and “Chveni Magti”:

• Magti Hit screens the most popular movie hits of the 21st century in Georgian and in HD.
• Magti Kino features the most popular and high-earning films of the past 20 years in Georgian.
• Chveni Magti broadcasts masterpieces of Georgian feature and documentary films.

MagtiSat currently offers subscribers more than 100 channels in standard definition (SD) and 6 in high definition (HD) within different programme packages.

Thanks to satellite broadcasting provided by the ASTRA satellite owned and operated by SES, MagtiSat is available all over Georgia, including in the country’s mountain regions. Two years on the market has shown that demand for satellite TV broadcasting is significant in Georgia—not only in the regions, where other telecommunications networks are either difficult to deploy or not cost-effective, but also in the country’s capital, where digital terrestrial TV and IPTV solutions are present.

Based upon global trends and strong demand for high-quality digital broadcasting in Georgia and in the region as a whole, MagtiCom and SES built an uplink station in late 2013. With an antenna radius of 6.3 metres and weighing in at over 6 tonnes, this satellite ground station is unique in Georgia in terms of power and operational output, and is one of the largest in the entire Caucasus region.

Mr Irakli Lobzhanidze, MagtiCom’s Marketing Director: ’We are proud to announce today that the number of MagtiSat subscribers has grown three-fold over the past year and has reached around 115,000. According to our data, we became the country’s largest pay-TV operator in a mere two years. We believe that the secret of our success is our country-wide world-class satellite TV coverage, the unique content we offer and great customer service.’

Mr Håkan Sjödin, SES’s Vice President (Sales) for Scandinavia, the Baltic and Eastern Europe: ’We would like to congratulate our partner MagtiCom for the great results they have achieved in only 2 years, and are proud to be part of their success. This year we are planning to launch ASTRA 5B, a new satellite which will extend SES’ transponder capacity and geographical reach across Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus. We hope that this launch will increase our successful co-operation with MagtiCom, and that together we will implement new, thriving projects which will reveal the benefits and potential of satellite broadcasting to all.’