Eutelsat announces Balkan deals

Service provider Serbia Broadband (SBB) is launching triple-play services with satellite operator Eutelsat.

The company is partnering with Eutelsat’s Skylogic affiliate to offer the Tooway satellite broadband service in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia and Montenegro. It will bundle broadband services with its Total TV platform, delivered by the Eutelsat 16A satellite.

Speaking at a press conference at Informa’s Digital TV CEE conference in Prague, Apostolos Triantafyllou, regional director of sales at Eutelsat said that the deal allowed SBB to market triple-play services in areas where terrestrial infrastructure was lacking. A single 78cm dish equipped with a dual LNB could pick up signals from both 9° East and 16° East, combining Ku-band delivered DTH TV and Ka-band delivered broadband. He said that the model could be extended across most of Eutelsat’s satellite footprint with dual LNBs reaching the Ka-Sat position and its various other orbital slots.

Separately broadcasters from Bosnia and Herzegovina are launching a new platform called TEAM:SAT on the Eutelsat 16A satellite.

The TEAM:SAT platform, comprising seven TV channels and two radio stations, will launch on September 1. TV Hayat, Radio Televizia BN, FACE and Al Jazeera Balkans will share a multiplex to target TV homes in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as expatriate communities across Europe. The channels will be multiplexed and uplinked to Eutelsat 16A by TEAM:MEDIA which is installing a teleport in Sarajevo.