The FINANCIAL — Satellite television in Georgia will reach 50% of TV viewers within two years, Hakan Sjodin, Vice President, Sales Nordic, Baltic and Eastern Europe at SES, told The FINANCIAL. “That is because of the huge difference between image quality of satellite broadcasting and the rest of broadcasting networks offered in Georgia,” Sjodin believes. With rapidly increasing demand for quality services the Georgian market is ready to experience a digital and satellite revolution.
This month The FINANCIAL visited The International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) 2016 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. IBC is the premier annual event for professionals engaged in the creation, management and delivery of entertainment and news content worldwide.
SES, the global satellite company, was one of the participants of the IBC 2016 forum.
The exhibition featured over 1,800 exhibitors, including 249 companies at their first IBC. A total of 435 speakers took part in more than 100 sessions across the five days.
One of the most popular sessions featured Ang Lee talking about, and demonstrating, how he has employed remarkable technology to create a strong sense of engagement in his new movie, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Specially created for IBC, the clip from the forthcoming movie was projected at 120 frames per second in 4K 3D, using Christie’s 6P laser projection and Dolby Atmos.
“When it comes to telecomm, Georgian technology is definitely very advanced, but when it comes to satellite transmissions – maybe not so much,” says Hakan Sjodin. “You have to educate people, you shouldn’t throw out the TV just because everything is going from analogue to digital. It’s just the technology that is changing.”
The environment in Georgia is quite similar to Sweden where we started our business as a small satellite company. Our operation was expanded into Norway and Finland, then Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. In the long run we plan to expand to Armenia and Azerbaijan.
“What I like about the Georgian market is how the entry of Magtisat of DTH pay-TV was quickly picked up and how successful it became,” says Onno Zonneveld, Vice-President Business Development CIS, Head of the Representative Office in Ukraine at SES Astra AB. “Actually it is proof that even if people don’t have money they still want quality.”
“If you look at the Georgian market we have 30-35% watching satellite TV and I think that it will be 50% within 2 years’ time because the quality difference is huge,” Hakan Sjodin believes. “I think for now in Georgia quality is the driver.”
“Good cooperation with Magticom gave us the platform for the launch, and to be able to provide it in a good way, with a lot of good content and especially good quality. And there is more space for growth.
“We see potential in the Georgian market; there are many things that could be done better and we could definitely play a role in that,” Zonneveld said.
In Europe, DBS satellite services are found mainly on SES Astra satellites and Hotbird (operated by Eutelsat). BSkyB (known as Sky) serves the UK; SKY Italia, Canal Digitaal and UPC being the main providers in Italy, the Netherlands and Central Europe; CanalSat, owned by France’s Canal+ and Vivendi; Sky Deutschland in Germany.
The overall market share of DBS satellite services in 2004 was 21.4% of all TV homes, however this varies highly from country to country. For example, in Germany, with many free-to-air TV-stations, the DBS market share is almost 40%, and in Belgium and the Netherlands, it’s only about 7%, due to the widespread cable networks with exclusive content.
Currently there are two primary satellite television providers of subscription-based service available to United States consumers: DirecTV and Dish Network.
Pay-TV is also growing in popularity amongst Russian TV viewers. The NTV Russia news company, owned by Gazprom, broadcasts the NTV Plus package to 560,000 households, reaching over 1.5 million viewers.
Modern Russian satellite broadcasting services based on powerful geostationary buses such as Gals, Ekspress, USP and Eutelsat, provide a large quantity of free-to-air television channels to millions of householders.
Tricolor TV is the biggest satellite television operator. It broadcasts a pack of TV channels in the European part of Russia and most of the Siberian, Ural and Far East regions. Broadcasting in the European part has been carried out since December 2005 by esv Eutelsat W4. Broadcasting in the Eastern regions began in December 2007.
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