Eutelsat Communications and Poland’s Cyfrowy Polsat have entered into a new contract for additional capacity at the Hot Bird video neighbourhood, along with a multi-year agreement to extend the lease of existing capacity.
Cyfrowy Polsat and its wholly owned subsidiary Telewizja Polsat now lease a total of six Hot Bird transponders.
The new capacity, together with an effective model of cooperation with other broadcasters, will allow Cyfrowy Polsat to add more HD channels to its offer. At present the 3.5 million subscribers to its DTH platform can already receive 37 channels in the format.
Commenting on the development, Dariusz Dzialkowski, Cyfrowy Polsat’s CTO, said: “As Poland’s leading media group and the largest satellite pay-TV platform, Cyfrowy Polsat has placed HDTV at the heart of our growth strategy. The new satellite resources at Eutelsat’s Hot Bird environment will enable us to further expand our channel offering.
“The longstanding partnership between Eutelsat and Cyfrowy Polsat and the exceptional quality of the resources at the Hot Bird environment have enabled us to continue to take our services to a new level of performance.”
Jean-François Leprince-Ringuet, Eutelsat’s chief commercial officer, added: “Cyfrowy Polsat Group has been one of the finest success stories of the European broadcasting market over more than two decades and is once again setting the agenda with creative service packaging and a strong play in HDTV. We are delighted to pursue our partnership with this new multi-year contract at the Hot Bird neighbourhood.”
The announcement was made in Venice on the occasion of Eutelsat’s Broadcast Seminar and the Eutelsat TV Awards.
