“We entered 2009 against the backdrop of the fiercest economic downturn in living memory from which the satellite industry, in general, and SES WORLD SKIES in particular, have so far only been marginally affected,” says Elias Zaccack, vice president for Asia Pacific sales, SES WORLD Skies. “We can look back on some notable successes and highlights in 2009. In terms of achievements, we commenced of the year with Ciel-2 going operational, a satellite serving North America.” He continues, “In February, we witnessed the successful launch of NSS-9 at 183 degrees East, serving the Pacific Ocean Region. NSS-9 is the first in a line of satellites that will strengthen our ability to serve emerging markets across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. We also closed the year with the successful launch of NSS-12, the largest satellite in our fleet to date, at the vital orbital position of 57 degrees East – the crossroads of three continents. In late 2009, we acquired Protostar-2, an in-orbit satellite that will allow us to grow our DTH activities in Asia. And of course, let’s not forget that in 2009, we successfully integrated SES AMERICOM and SES NEW SKIES and launched our new brand, SES WORLD SKIES.” Zaccack’s colleagues in the Asia Pacific satellite industry are similarly upbeat. ABS chief executive officer Tom Choi agrees that, relative to most other industries, the satellite industry proved to be fairly resilient to the global financial downturn in 2009. “Asia Broadcast Satellite (ABS) was able to maintain its impressive growth of 10 consecutive quarters at 20 percent Quarter-on-Quarter compounded growth through 2009. ABS has increased its revenues eightfold since the acquisition of the former LMI Company. (The company) was able to maintain 99 percent fill rate on the ABS-1 satellite.” “2009 was a very positive year for MEASAT,” says MEASAT’s chief operating officer Paul Brown-Kenyon. “During the year we saw the successful launch of the MEASAT-3a (M3a) satellite; an continued expansion in our support for our DTH and HD broadcasting customer base; and, the execution of the next phase of our African expansion with the deployment of Africasat. In terms of challenges during 2009, we continued to see some fallout from the global financial crisis providing additional challenges as we plan the further expansion of our fleet.” Brown-Kenyon says MEASAT’s biggest achievements for the year revolved around delivering on their strategy to develop 91.5E into a video hotslot for the region. “This included the return to the launch pad, and the textbook launch of the M3a satellite which had been delayed from 2008. M3a increased by 50 percent our capacity at 91.5E while providing our core broadcasting customers with in orbit redundancy. (This marked) the coming of age of our HD Video distribution neighborhood with a further 8 channels selecting the MEASAT-3 / 3a HD platform. As a result of these achievements we have saw strong revenue and EBITDA growth during the year, and are well on track to reach USD100m annual revenue within the next few years.” Adds AsiaSat CEO Peter Jackson, “While some Asian satellite operators were feeling the effects of the tighter credit market to launch new or replacement satellites to expand their service, we are very proud that we made a number of solid achievements over the past year. We successfully launched AsiaSat 5 in August 2009 which replaced our AsiaSat 2 satellite well ahead of its retirement schedule. We also worked with our partner SpaceCom to relocate AsiaSat 2 to a new orbital location where the satellite will continue to generate revenue for the company. With the successful launch of AsiaSat 5, the backup satellite we ordered for AsiaSat 5 is now reconfigured to further grow our business. During the year, we also saw our core business expanding steadily with an increase in number of new customers and contract renewals for existing customers.” On the importance of India to industry growth in the region, Jackson explains, “While broadcast TV is developing very rapidly in India, there is a shortage of satellite capacity to meet the demand. The Indian Government has allocated some of the satellite C-band frequency to the terrestrial services so that has exacerbated the shortage. Opportunities are enormous in view of the requirements from broadcasters for all types of applications, such as C-band for content distribution nationally to cable headends, or Ku-band for Direct-to-Home television services to consumers. We have been serving the market from the 90s and we look forward to continuing to play a contributing role in the rapidly expanding Indian media sector.” Says ABS’ Choi, “India is a huge market for the Pay TV industry with over 130 million TV households and over 300 satellite TV channels currently broadcasting in India. There is an enormous opportunity for ABS to take advantage of the fast growing DTH, HITS and VSAT businesses in India and we are working on developing the right business strategy with local partners. Currently, ISRO is unable to provide the enough capacity on its ISRO built satellites to meet this growing demand. As a result, we are witnessing a increasing demand for capacity on our satellites; ABS-1 and ABS-2 (scheduled to launch in 2012) which deliver high power Ku band beam coverage over India/Asia to satisfy this growth.” Explains Zaccack, “SES WORLD SKIES has delivered a steady stream of important new business wins throughout the emerging markets that it serves, in particular in Asia-Pacific where it is becoming a major DTH platform with 400 channels reaching 27 million TV households throughout Asia. Our business in India comes in the form of our support to the market in association with the Indian Space and Research Organization (ISRO) and Antrix Corporation, its commercial arm. Through Antrix Corporation, SES offers capacity to multiple applications and users in India – we provide DTH capacity from our NSS-6 satellite and currently Dish TV has over 5.5 Million subscribers on the satellite. We also offer capacity to the leading VSAT solution providers in the country and host over 80,000 VSAT terminals with services ranging from e-learning, e-governance, banking, etc from two of our satellites covering India, NSS-11 (108.2 degrees East) and NSS-12 (57 degrees East). SES also works with WWIL, the first HITS operator in India and offers C-Band capacity to assist in the digitization of the cable infrastructure in India.” “Over a period of time we expect to see organic growth for the DTH operators as they seek to offer an evolving mix of services and content to consumers. Our experience in working closely with DTH operators across the globe suggests a strong co-relation between the number of subscribers and the number of channels offered on a platform – hence if we are to see the kind of subscriber growth predicated by the analysts, a significant growth in the number of channels is also to be expected. 2010 will also see the more wide spread deployment of HD services and in many respects the next few years are likely to see a substantial growth in the offering of HD services “For the VSAT industry, we see state level governmental initiatives as a key driver for growth. The e-Gram project in Gujarat is a case in point where there has been a true democratization of information as a result of the e-Gram platform. “For HITS, with the formalization of the policy, we expect to see a number of operators assisting with this important effort to help with the digitization of India’s cable infrastructure and to offer an important avenue for the growth of broadband penetration as envisaged by the Government of India.” “All three sets of applications (DTH, VSAT and HITS) and the service providers that use our capacity to offer these compelling services are key to our success in India and we hope to continue to work with Antrix / ISRO, our common customers and build on our very important business in India.” Indeed, MEASAT’s Brown-Kenyon considers the Indian DTH market to be one of the most interesting in the region. “With a large number of operators, relatively low ARPUs, strong subscriber growth and disruptive technologies (it) provides players with both one of the biggest opportunities in the region and one of the most challenging environments. MEASAT has been working with Antrix for a number of years. Today we are the prime satellite for the Reliance BigTV DTH platform, as well as providing Ku-Band capacity for the Sun Direct DTH platform and C-Band capacity for other broadcasting users. We see significant opportunities in this market with the strong growth in the DTH market.” In terms of the year ahead, Brown-Kenyon says, “We expect 2010 to see the continued growth in the Asian DTH and broadcast distribution business. Our focus will be on ensuring that we continue to provide a distinctive offering to our core customers in these key segments, as well as planning ahead for future capacity expansion both in Asia and Africa.” ABS’ Choi is optimistic. “ABS plans to maintain its aggressive strategy in exploring additional strategic partnerships and M&A opportunities which will enable it to expand its business, capabilities, and presence. “ABS will also continue to invest in additional Value Added Services platforms across all of its satellite fleet, as well as through partnerships with third-party satellite operators. ABS has already made over US$5M investments in teleport facilities for video and data distribution services and will make additional investments into its newly acquired Satellite Broadcast Center in Subic Bay, Philippines to expand its capabilities and services. “ABS’ priority for 2010 will be to successfully complete the integration of the business and operations of Mabuhay and to work on the replacement for the ABS-5/Agila-2 satellite. In 2010, ABS also plans to start aggressively marketing the ABS-2 capacity on a pre-launch basis. ABS has already signed pre-launch lease agreements in excess of US$300 million to its existing customers, however, ABS plans to sign pre-launch agreements for approximately 75 percent of the capacity on ABS-2 over the next 12 months.” Says AsiaSat’s Jackson, “We expect that our core business will continue to grow with AsiaSat 5 providing additional capacity to serve new markets. Also the anticipated HDTV growth and proliferation of new distribution platforms in Asia have created opportunities that bode well for 2010.” And SES WORLD SKIES Zaccack concludes, “Our launch program continues into 2010 with three satellites slated for launch, one from our sister-company, SES ASTRA and another two from SES WORLD SKIES serving the North America region. We will be integrating and rebranding the Protostar-2 satellite into our global fleet to support our activities in Asia and in India in particular. Last November, our parent company, SES announced that it is investing $75 million (US) in O3b Networks to support the development of their high-speed satellite internet network serving the “other three billion” without broadband access around the globe. This is an exciting new development for SES WORLD SKIES and we’re looking forward to collaborating with O3b in serving our customers around the globe, and in particular in Asia, where many areas remain unconnected without broadband access.”