content distribution astra at 25

This year sees two major 25-year birthdays for satellite operators. 8 February saw the 25th anniversary of the launch of Saudi Arabia- based Arabsat. Its first satellite was launched on that date. Closer to home there’s another 25th birthday on 1 March, when Luxembourg’s Société Européenne des Satellites (SES) was formed back in 1985. Chris Forrester tells the story of those early, challenging years.

Happy birthday Astra!

A

rabsat, which followed the likes of Intelsat and Eutelsat into the satellite business, had a very tough early few years. Its first satellite carried a

small military cargo (on behalf of NATO, and in S-band) and 25 C-band transponders. However, immediately after launch one of the craft’s solar panels had problems. It was crippled thereafter. It operated from 19 deg East, but worse was to come. It had certain gyroscopic malfunctions and was then mostly used as a back-up. By September 1991, and another malfunction and began to drift off station. It failed completely in March 1992. Arabsat’s current chairman Farid Khashoqgi, speaking in February, said there were times in the early years when they seriously considered closing the operation. Arabsat has since proved to be a most successful operator, and currently has some $1.6 billion of new satellites under procurement.

Closer to home, Astra’s early days were just as traumatic, although ended up successfully. Astra’s story began in 1977 when Luxembourg received five broadcast channels as a result of the World Administrative Radio Conference (WARC-77) in

8 l ibe l march/april 2010 l www.ibeweb.com

In February 2010 SES announced its results for 2009. Revenues of Euro 1.7 billion. A backlog of contracts worth Euro 6.7 billion, and an operating profit of Euro 700 million. Not bad for a project that ‘never had a chance’.

Geneva. There were problems, however. These were for tightly focussed beams that barely extended beyond Luxembourg’s borders. That wasn’t quite what SES Astra wanted. Europe’s (mostly) public broadcasters wanted Luxembourg kept firmly in its box. After all, Europe had already been on the receiving end of

Luxembourg’s powerful terrestrial radio signals, of Radio Luxembourg and RTL beaming from a massive 2500 kWatt tower in the East of Luxembourg, at Junglinster. British and French satellites were equally toughly treated, and WARC- 77 laid down quite tough terrestrial limitations. The UK’s signals had to cease at the channel, and same with the French. But tightly focussing a beam for tiny Luxembourg was near-ludicrous. By any measure the natural overspill would have reached territory much larger than Luxembourg itself. With these limitations Luxembourg’s ‘LuxSat’ project failed to get off the ground.

All these WARC-77 schemes demanded high-power satellites using Broadcasting Satellite Services bands (BSS). The official British project was for a pair of satellites -

Marco Polo 1 and 2 - offering just five channels and the catastrophe that was British Satellite Broadcasting is well documented.

But at the same time Hughes Satellite (now part of Boeing) had developed medium power satellites specifically addressing telephony usage (and being used by the likes of Intelsat). Their advantage was that they needed less transmission power per channel so that the payload could carry a far greater number of transponders: 16 transponders compared with five on a high- powered satellite. At the same time, thanks to the technical progress made in terms of reception equipment, the signals transmitted by these satellites could still be received using small-sized satellite dishes.

Consequently, a plan was formulated to use these telecom frequencies, within the Fixed Satellite Services (FSS) bands. Using the FSS band meant placing TV signals onto telecommunication frequencies, and all over Europe: technically the idea presented little challenge, but a fresh and highly controversial view of frequency use.

“Astra was simply not allowed,” said Christian Schwarz-Schilling, the Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48