Eutelsat HOT BIRD™ Neighbourhood Consolidates Reach In Italy

PARIS — Eutelsat Communications (Euronext Paris: ETL) today announced that the results of its two-yearly survey on satellite television trends in Italy reconfirm the Group’s HOT BIRD™ neighbourhood as the beacon for multi-channel viewing in one of Europe’s most avid television markets. The new figures were announced at the annual Sat Expo international satellite exhibition taking place in Rome from March 19 to 21.

The number of homes across Italy equipped for Direct-to-Home (DTH) reception has increased by 13% over two years to 7.1 million homes, representing almost one in three of the 23.1 million television homes in the country. The number of homes equipped for DTH reception from Eutelsat’s HOT BIRD™ neighbourhood grew at a faster rate of 18% over the last 24 months. The installed base of DTH antennas equipped for HOT BIRD™ reception in Italy now stands at 6.1 million. Pay-TV accounts for the lion’s share of satellite TV homes, representing over 4.6 million homes and showing a growth rate of 24% over the last two years.

As a forerunner in digital broadcasting, since 1994, the HOT BIRD™ position is now exclusively delivering Italian channels in digital format in Italy, well ahead of terrestrial analogue switch-off. Eutelsat’s leading video neighbourhood broadcasts over 360 digital channels for the Italian market including the first seven channels in High Definition, which are available in the SKY Italia platform.

“Eutelsat’s exhaustive survey on satellite TV trends highlights just how well-entrenched digital multi-channel viewing is in Italy,” said Giuliano Berretta Eutelsat CEO. “Satellite has been a pioneering platform for accompanying the development of a vibrant digital broadcasting industry in Italy, and is already showing strong evidence that this success will be repeated with HDTV.”

Eutelsat’s survey was conducted by led by TNS with face to face interviews.