The future of the controversial German DTH platform Entavio has become clearer since management control of Premiere passed to News Corp, says Romain Bausch, President and CEO of SES.
“We now have a clear interface to speak to about the future of Entavio and we can now do so over the next few weeks and months,” said Bausch. SES had previously voiced concerns that Premiere’s own market entry product, Premiere Star, was too close in format to Entavio and SES would morph its product into a business-to-business platform.
Bausch also highlighted recent agreement between Germany’s public and private broadcasters over the transition to digital and subsequent launch of HD services. “This will make Entavio an instrument supporting analogue to digital and that was what it was always intended to be,” he said.
Separately, Bausch said that last week’s technical problems with Astra 5A, the former Sirius 2 satellite at 31.5 degrees East, had now been stabilised and the system was about to be rebooted and that human error could not be excluded.
Astra 5A will provide services to the German cablenet KabelDienstLeistungsgesellschaft (KDL) and the Lithuanian operator Satgate.
