Central and Eastern Europe has long been an attractive proposition for satellite operators, with each keen to become a leading provider of DTH-delivered services in as many markets as possible.
It therefore goes without saying that every one of these operators has a story to tell, be it of success, failure or simply being too late to the draw when competing with its rivals. In the case of SES Astra, it can with some justification point to the Czech Republic and Slovakia as the markets that started off its success story in the region, despite the fact it only entered them as recently as 2005.
At that time, Central and Eastern Europe was served by a small number of mostly well-established DTH services and the ‘boom’ in new platform launches had yet to happen. In the case of the Czech Republic and neighbouring Slovakia, one of those platforms was a still relatively new Czech Link, which only had just over 50,000 subscribers.
Within a year Czech Link had been restructured, with Skylink and CS Link taking over the brand’s customers and 23.5 degrees East orbital position, and a transformation had begun. Indeed, the number of customers using the platforms grew by around 300,000 a year, so that by mid-2010 Skylink had over one million, of which 715,000 were in the Czech Republic, and CS Link around 350,000 in the Czech Republic. Then a year later, T-Mobile launched a DTH service based on the Skylink offer.
This success, achieved in only a short time, propelled the two platforms into the number one and two positions in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It also sent out a clear message to the rest of the industry to the effect that pre-paid DTH operations can be as, if not more, successful than those which use a subscription-based business model. Indeed, one need look no further than Russia’s Tricolor TV, which now has just over 10 million customers, to see how true this is.
The latest and perhaps most interesting chapter in the history of Skylink and CS Link was written last year, when both were within the space of only a few months acquired by the Luxembourg-based M7 Group.
The latter is already a leading player in the DTH market in Western Europe, operating, amongst others, Canal Digitaal, the Télésat brands and Austriasat, and new opportunities to cooperate with SES Astra have now opened up. They include simulcrypt, expanded technical support and an exchange of DTH business know-how.
SES Astra’s own position in the Czech Republic and Slovakia will also have been strengthened by the platforms’ acquisition by the M7 Group. The company has until now contributed to their success by continually adding to the number of HD channels it distributes from the 23.5 degrees East orbital slot – the current number stands at 20 – and indeed making 23.5 degrees East the de-facto national “satellite hotspot” for both countries. As of 2010 there were already one million Czech households receiving DVB-S services from 23.5 degrees East, and at the beginning of this year the total number of users in both countries stood at around 2.3 million.
SES Astra has, in addition, given viewers in the Czech Republic and Slovakia access to hundreds of FTA channels, including nine in HD, on Astra at 19.2 degrees East free of charge simply by using a duo LNB converter.
The company’s commitment to the two countries has also been demonstrated by the important role it has played in the transition to digital broadcasting in both.
