Euronews goes mobile on SESAT 1

MIPTV – CANNES. Euronews is increasing its capacity on Eutelsat’s SESAT 1 satellite at 36°East. In doing so it becomes the first channel in Europe to broadcast in mobile phone and mobile television standards. Until now, mobile phone and mobile television operators had to encode the MPEG-2 signal for usage over the mobile networks. For the first time in Europe, operators can use a channel’s signal directly in their network standard without additional coding. The Euronews Mobile programme consists of a 3GPP stream for 3G phone networks, as well as an MPEG-4 stream for DVB-H and DMB standard mobile television operators.

EuroNews says it is already carried by 32 mobile phone operators in twenty European countries. The channel regularly participates in DVB-H broadcast tests: in 2005 in Helsinki with Digita and YLE, in 2006 in Paris with TDF, in Prague with T-Mobile, in Berne with Swisscom and in Italy with RAI.

“This is a first on the European broadcasting scene,” said Euronews chairman and CEO Philippe Cayla. “EuroNews is perfectly suited to reception on mobile devices. Operators have shown a strong interest in the all-image format of EuroNews, which is ideal for mobile screens, and the multilingual offer of the channel is another noted advantage. We understood the importance of facilitating the retransmission of our signal. This development is part of EuroNews’ strategy to diversify its signals according to the type of user and to position the channel for the large potential market of mobile television.”