[SatNews] HISPASAT has reached an agreement with British teleport owners Goonhilly Earth Station (GES) Ltd. to provide television distribution services throughout Europe.

A transponder from the Hispasat 1E satellite will provide the capacity contracted over the next three years, which will be transmitted by means of one of the teleport antennas. The entire process chain of transmission has been set up and will be provided by GES. Through this agreement, both companies are introducing an attractive commercial offer to the market, which is aimed at achieving maximum flexibility so that the television channels can avoid the traditional barriers they come across, both in terms of cost and time scale, when they want to distribute their channels.

The addition of services from Goonhilly adds to the teleports that already offer a shared solution on HISPASAT 30° West digital platforms. With these solutions, HISPASAT offers great flexibility to audiovisual content producers seeking to transmit their signals, either directly to the user (DTH) or indirectly by transporting TV channels to cable head-ends. In addition, this enables transmissions in both DVB-S format and DVB-S2 –ensuring not only optimized power transmission, but also bandwidth consumption.

The HISPASAT 1E satellite during the build process.

Photo is courtesy of SSL.

Goonhilly was commissioned in 1962 and received the first transatlantic images broadcast over Telstar. It also broadcast numerous historic events to Europe including the first lunar landings. Currently, Goonhilly is open to commercial services and is fully operational as teleport for satellite communications.

Executive Comment

Steve Jones, Commercial Director at GES, said, "As part of our ongoing investment in our site’s capabilities we are delighted to offer the broadcast uplink market an alternative, attractive route to market. Working alongside HISPASAT, with our collective experience and knowledge, we aim to make it easier for channels to get their content to their customers."

HISPASAT Chief Commercial Officer Ignacio Sanchis also voiced his approval for this agreement and said, “which enables us to widen our offer in Europe and provide television operators with adaptable and scalable solutions for every situation.”