Sky Deutschland has signed a multi-year contract extension for back-up services with MX1, the technical services subsidiary of Astra satellite operator SES.
The agreement ensures that, in case of any technical issues with the German pay-TV broadcaster’s main signal, the programming will be restored in a short timeframe from the MX1 Broadcast Centre in Unterföhring near Munich, according to MX1.
The contract includes playout and turnaround services such as encoding, multiplexing and encryption as well as uplink services. To support these services, the MX1 Broadcast Centre will permanently receive all necessary data and video transmission material from the Sky channels.
“The signing of the contract with Sky is good news for movie fans and sports enthusiasts,” said Christoph Mühleib, head of MX1 and Astra services in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. “This new agreement with Sky confirms the trend that business continuity is becoming more and more important, even in the broadcasting industry. All of our existing customers, new customers as well as other stand-alone broadcast channels can benefit from these continuity services.”
Stefan Kunz, vice president broadcast services at Sky Deutschland, added: “The absolute reliability of our services for broadcasting operations is very important. With the solution provided by MX1, we are able to sustain our broadcasting operation and service availability as seamlessly as possible in the case of critical issues to our main site.”
Sky Deutschland relocated the playout and uplink for most of the transponders the company uses on Astra (19.2° East) from MX1’s teleport in Unterföhring to Sky Italia’s teleport in Milan in November 2016 as part of Sky group’s corporate strategy to streamline its operations across Europe.
