Displaying items by tag: NOORSAT

French satellite company Eutelsat Communications has acquired NOORSAT, one of the leading satellite service providers in the Middle East, from Bahrain’s Orbit Holding Group.

Established in 2004, NOORSAT is the distributor of Eutelsat capacity in the Middle East, serving blue-chip customers and providing services for over 300 TV channels almost exclusively from Eutelsat’s Middle East and North Africa neighborhoods at 7/8° West and 25.5° East.

The acquisition of NOORSAT fits with Eutelsat’s broader strategy of streamlining distribution within selected core video neighborhoods where it can create value. It will allow Eutelsat to strengthen the long term commercial development of its market-leading video positions in the Arabic world and increase its direct access to end-customers, facilitating stimulation of High Definition TV take-up and the up-selling of incremental video services.

Michel Azibert, Eutelsat Chief Commercial and Development Officer, said: “NOORSAT’s capabilities and market knowledge will further consolidate our longstanding position in the dynamic Middle East video market. By integrating NOORSAT’s service platform and teams we are underlining our commitment to serving customers in one of the key markets within in our global footprint.”

Eutelsat has acquired 100 percent of NOORSAT for a consideration of US$75 million, debt free and cash free. The acquisition will add upwards of US$15 million to Eutelsat’s consolidated revenues on an annualized basis after the elimination of the capacity leased by Eutelsat from NOORSAT. Its slightly dilutive impact on Eutelsat’s EBITDA margin will be absorbed within the current margin objectives.

H.264/MPEG4 encoding technology leader Telairity announced that Bahrain-based satellite service provider NOORSAT has deployed multiple Telairity BE8200 and BE8740 multi-channel HD encoders to meet their rapidly growing demand for HD channels.

Established in 2004, NOORSAT is one of the most prominent satellite service providers in the Arab World, transmitting over 350 TV and radio channels to over 50 million TV homes. The company provides effective solutions for large and small broadcasters at competitive prices via its extensive satellite capacity and modern ground infrastructure.

“As the market moves towards HD, we at NOORSAT are focusing our efforts on providing new HD services to our channel partners, both current and future, based on their needs,” said Marwan Al Tal, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at NOORSAT. “We are proud to be using Telairity technology for all our growing HD requirements.  Our decision to adopt Telairity encoders back in 2013 has already paid off in the upgrade of our earlier SD units to HD, significantly extending the useful life of these systems.”

Over the past years, as demand shifted from SD to HD channels, NOORSAT reconfigured Telairity’s BE9200 and BE9400 multichannel SD systems into BE8100 and BE8200 HD systems at no cost. When HD demand exceeded the supply of converted SD units, Telairity’s NexGen BE8740 1RU four-channel HD/SD encoders were in production, ready to cost-effectively supplement the existing systems.

Compared to the previous BE8200 systems, the new BE8740 units are more than twice as space-efficient and, on a per-channel basis, consume only 25% as much power while providing a very significant cost savings. In addition to the BE8740 four-channel configuration purchased by NOORSAT, the BE8700 NexGen distribution encoder can be configured as a single-channel BE8710, a dual-channel BE8720, or a three-channel BE8730.

The flexibility of the new BE8740 systems to encode both HD and SD formats, and to multiplex outputs over both ASI and IP, allows Broadcasters to readily adapt these units to future customer requirements. “The fact that we don’t have to purchase functionality on an option-by-option basis with Telairity encoders provides us with substantial cost savings. We can utilize these savings for our existing as well as future customers, giving us a competitive advantage in the marketplace,” Marwan added.

“NOORSAT has a very demanding environment that is constantly changing based on their growing customer requirements,” said Khalid Daoud, Telairity Director of Business Development for MENA. “We are happy to provide NOORSAT with flexible, multichannel HD/SD solutions that allow them to adapt quickly to any current need, and whose ready upgradability also protects them against potential future changes.”