South African direct-to-home (DTH) television operator MultiChoice has signed a long-term, multi-transponder agreement for satellite capacity with Intelsat, the company said at IBC2009 in Amsterdam.
The agreement extends and expands MultiChoice’s existing contract on the Intelsat 7 satellite at 68.5 degrees East to the follow-on satellite, Intelsat 20 (IS-20), which is slated to be launched in early 2012. The contract, which spans the 15-year expected life of IS-20, also provides restoration capacity, resulting in a more robust network platform.
MultiChoice and Intelsat collaborated on the design of the South African Ku-band payload for IS-20, which will optimize the signal reception power for MultiChoice’s more than 2.6 million DStv customers throughout South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique.
