Forthnet Group, a broadband and pay-TV service provider
(under the NOVA brand name) in Greece, announced the expansion of its
longstanding commercial relationship with Eutelsat Communications.
A five-year distribution agreement enabling Forthnet
Group to market the new-generation Tooway broadband service to users across
Greece and Cyprus has been signed with Skylogic, Eutelsat’s broadband
affiliate. Tooway is provided by Eutelsat’s powerful KA-SAT High Throughput
Satellite, a new wireless broadband infrastructure for Europe.
Eutelsat and Forthnet Group have in parallel
entered into a broader commercial agreement to ensure future satellite capacity
for NOVA at Eutelsat’s flagship HOT BIRD video neighbourhood in order to launch
new premium services and accelerate the acquisition of pay-TV subscribers.
With these new contracts, Forthnet Group will be the
first operator in Europe to bundle the Tooway broadband service with its pay-TV
portfolio in order to offer users triple-play services through a single
satellite dish and a single subscription.
Satellite broadband, with download speeds of up to 10
Mbps and upload speeds of up to 4 Mbps, together with VOIP will start to be
commercialized in Q4 2011 and offered in combination with NOVA pay-TV.
The full service will be delivered via Tooway antennas
equipped with a dual-feed in order to access broadband from the KA-SAT
satellite and NOVA from the HOT BIRD satellites.
We are particularly satisfied with the extension of the
cooperation of Forthnet Group with Eutelsat Communications. It concerns an
agreement that enables us to extend the reach of our broadband and combined
broadband and Pay-TV offering to all Greek households, regardless of their
geographical location,” said Yiannis Kavaklis, chief commercial officer,
Forthnet.
The combination of premium content offered
by NOVA Pay-TV with broadband through Eutelsat’s specialized
High Throughput Satellite is in line with strategy to offer
affordable, easy to use and quality services to Greek
households.
Covering unserved areas also presents the
Group with the commercial opportunity to extend its broadband customer
base beyond its fixed line coverage.
This agreement also allows Forthnet to
complement its Pay-TV offering in Cyprus with high-speed broadband
services, offering a complete solution to the dynamic Cypriot market.
“These new agreements with Forthnet Group underline our
commitment to providing clients with a range of
state-of-the-art and complementary services that equip them to
retain, broaden and diversify their subscriber base,” said Andrew Wallace,
chief commercial officer, Eutelsat.
By bundling pay-TV services from Eutelsat’s HOT BIRD
neighbourhood with the Tooway broadband service from KA-SAT, Forthnet is
leveraging an exceptional opportunity to offer users simple and immediate
access to premium programming and Internet access in one
package.
Despite deployment of terrestrial broadband, there are
still more than 800,000 unserved citizens in Greece, which ranks 23rd of the
EU27 member states in terms of broadband penetration.
Eutelsat Communications recently
announced the signature of a distribution contract for the Tooway broadband
service between its Skylogic subsidiary and Eurosat-Ukraine. Eurosat-Ukraine is
an affiliate of Altegrosky, a provider of satellite-delivered telecoms services
in Russia and CIS countries.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com