2007: Another Successful Year for ASTRA In Germany

BETZDORF (Luxembourg) — SES ASTRA, an SES company (Euronext Paris and Luxembourg Stock Exchange: SESG), today announced that it has further increased the number of digital satellite TV homes reached by the ASTRA satellite system in Germany by 1.72 million to 9.75 million households (+ 21.5 percent). SES ASTRA thus remains the driving force and leading infrastructure in digital television in Germany. In total, Germany had 36.98 million analogue and digital TV homes last year. The number of satellite households remains stable at 16.7 million. As a result, 45 percent of all TV households are directly served via satellite. Cable serves 17.9 million TV homes (48.4 percent). Terrestrial television is watched in 2.3 million homes (6.3 percent). While the number of cable households decreased by 600,000 in 2007, digital terrestrial TV increased its reach by 400,000 households.

These are the results of the latest Satellite Monitor, conducted annually by the market research institute TNS Infratest on behalf of SES ASTRA. For the monitoring, 6,000 telephone and face-to-face interviews were conducted all over Germany at the end of last year. The methodology and the results are controlled by independent institutes.

With an increase by 23.1 percent, the number of digital TV households in Germany has risen significantly last year and currently amounts to 15.61 million. The satellite therefore supplies two thirds of all digital households. For 63.3 percent or 9.88 million TV households, the digital satellite TV is the preferred reception mode, an increase by 20.9 percent compared to last year. 3.6 million TV homes (23.1 percent) are being served by cable. 2.06 million homes (13.2 percent) receive their digital programmes by antenna. 50,000 households (0.03 percent) are currently being served via DSL, compared to 40,000 in 2006. The share of analogue TV households continues to decrease and currently amounts to 21.4 million.

“As the switch to digital reception modes continues to advance in many regions in Germany, more and more viewers decide in favour of satellite TV,” said Wolfgang Elsäßer, Managing Director of SES ASTRA in Germany. “With an increase by more than 20 percent compared to last year, the satellite clearly proves to be the driving force of digitalization. We have consequently extended our offer in the past year and now provide 374 digital TV channels to German speaking regions. With this variety of high-quality programmes, we are absolutely confident that we will be able to convince more and more viewers of our digital offer in the future.”