Dateline Asia
THE NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK
By Mark Long
Originally appeared in the March, 1996 issue of Tele-satellit.
©1996 MLE INC. All Rights Reserved.
The direct-to-home (DTH) satellite market in Asia currently is being dramatically transformed by the recent successful launch of several new satellites and the parallel announcement of new digital satellite TV services for various markets throughout the region. By the year 2000, it is estimated that Asia will have about fifty million homes receiving satellite TV services, either directly via satellite or indirectly through cable or MMDS delivery systems. And once the People's Republic of China gets into the swing of things around the year 2005, a projected 130 million homes just in China will be able to receive satellite TV services, albeit indirectly via their local cable systems. That's why News Corporation's Rupert Murdoch was more than willing to write off an US$ 80 million loss at STAR TV during 1995 as long as it kept him in the running for a major share of this exponentially growing TV market.
Pace Micro Technology at the Cable and Satellite Asia 95 Exhibition, Hong Kong.
The new generation Asian satellites by and large have been designed to deliver higher powered C-band signals than their predecessors, which means that smaller antennas can be used down on the ground to receive their signals. What's more, high powered Ku band satellite transponders with regional coverage are becoming available in Asia for the very first time. All of this new capacity will serve as the spring board for numerous new direct to home (DTH) and cable/MMDS TV services, with the first of the new digital channels slated to air in the first quarter of 1996.
Encore Performance
On November 28, 1995, a Chinese Long March 2F rocket deployed the new satellite on behalf of Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co., Ltd. of Hong Kong. Called AsiaSat 2, this new Hot Bird for Asia embraces 53 countries within its C band footprint and therefore can potentially serve over 3.3 billion people or 63 percent of the world's population.AsiaSat 2 carries twenty four C band (3.62 to 4.2 GHz) transponders (twenty with a bandwidth of 36 MHz and four with a bandwidth of 72 MHz) and nine 54 MHz wide Ku-band transponders. The satellite's C band footprint is designed to provide extensive, medium powered (55 watts per transponder) coverage from Eastern Europe and Far East Russia to Japan and even Australia.
On the Ku band side (12.2 to 12.5 GHz), AsiaSat 2's narrower coverage beam focuses on the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Powerful 115 watt Ku band amplifiers give AsiaSat 2 the ability to overcome all but the heaviest torrential downpour without experiencing significant levels of signal outage.
A New STAR For Asia
In 1994, STAR TV snapped up the rights to a total of eight C band and three Ku band transponders on AsiaSat 2. In 1996, STAR TV intends to begin transmitting at least one multi channel, digitally compressed TV program package to Indonesian homes, with additional packages for other Asian markets to follow. STAR TV's new DigiSTAR TV delivery system will eventually transmit about fifty pay TV services through AsiaSat 2. The DigiSTAR IRDs, which are being manufactured by Pace Micro Technology Ltd., will be fully compliant with the MPEG-2 Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) standard.STAR TV intends to customize its new digital services to achieve the maximum possible viewing audience in each of its target markets. To achieve this goal, the Hong Kong based programmer is entering into partnerships with local programmers. This is exactly the opposite of the original STAR TV plan developed by previous owner Hutchvision, which called for marketing just two sets of channels throughout the northern and southern beams of AsiaSat 1.
'The pan Asian approach has now given away to an emphasis on local programming as regional programmers recognized the need for local content if their programs were to enjoy lasting appeal,' says Peter Jackson, CEO of Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co., Ltd. 'In this heady mix of politics, business and technology we will increasingly see new alliances between regional and national programmers.'
At least five different clusters of STAR TV program services are now under development, with each cluster featuring a major regional language. Indonesia will be the proving ground for the new STAR TV digital service. STAR TV and PT Matahari Lintas Cakrawala, Indonesia's sole pay TV licensee, will soon be offering a package of fifteen digitally compressed TV channels designed specifically for audiences in Indonesia, including movie services, music video channels, sports, general entertainment and news programming. The Indonesian company also will begin to produce local language TV programming later this year.
AsiaSat 2's European Bouquet
Germany's Deutsche Welle Radio and TV has announced a new multi-channel digital TV service for AsiaSat 2 which will transmit a bouquet of TV and Radio programming throughout the Asia Pacific region. Deutsche Welle's so called European Broadcast Bouquet (EBB) intends to field between four and five TV services, as many as a dozen European radio networks and a data channel. TV programmers will include Deutsche Welle TV, TV5 France, and RTVE Spain. A second European programmer, Portugal based Marconi Global Communications, will use AsiaSat 2 to broadcast RTPi, the Portuguese International Television Channel, and Portuguese radio service Antena 1. RPTi intends to use AsiaSat 2 to reach Portuguese speaking households in Asia, including 70,000 in Australia, 160,000 in Japan, and Macao, Timor, Goa and Malacca. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Radio, Film, and Television (MRFT) of the People's Republic of China has its own plans for the domestic and international distribution of TV programming through AsiaSat 2. In addition to serving new DTH and cable TV markets in Asia, AsiaSat 2 will provide two international news organizations with digital satellite links. Associated Press Television (APTV) and World-wide Television News (WTN) have each acquired 9 MHz segments of C-band capacity for the digital transmission of TV news programming on a daily basis.A Hot Bird for India?
On December 8, 1995, an Ariane rocket launched the Insat 2C and Telecom 2C satellites on behalf of India and France, respectively. Operated by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Insat 2C features twelve C band transponders operating in the standard 3.7 to 4.2 GHz frequency range, including two medium powered 50 watt transponders; six transponders operating in the 4.2 to 4.5 extended C-band frequency range; three S band transponders for community broadcast and mobile telecom use; and, in a first for India, three Ku band transponders for business telecommunications.Insat 2C has a more powerful C band beam with a wider coverage area than any previous Indian communications satellite. The design changes were intentionally made to give Insat 2C the ability to compete effectively with AsiaSat 2 as a Hot Bird for regional distribution of TV services. India's national broadcaster Doordarshan TV will control at least twelve C band transponders. To further regional distribution of its programming, the Doordarshan TV program services previously carried by other Insat satellites will migrate to Insat 2C once the spacecraft becomes fully operational at 93.5 degrees east longitude. Five additional transponders will be leased to regional, and perhaps even local, TV broadcasters. Past regulatory constraints have forced independent Indian TV programmers to look elsewhere for satellite capacity for their TV services, the main reason why Russian satellites covering the Asia Pacific region have been in such hot demand during recent years.
PanAmSat Plays the India Card
Launched on August 3, 1995, on behalf of the privately owned international satellite operator PanAmSat, PAS 4 already is fully operational at the orbital location of 68.5 degrees east longitude. PanAmSat's news communication satellite is a dual band spacecraft carrying sixteen C band and twenty four Ku band transponders. On C band, twelve 34 watt transponders are available with a bandwidth of 54 MHz as well as four transponders with a bandwidth of 64 MHz. On Ku band, the spacecraft features eight 54 MHz wide transponders and sixteen 27 MHz wide transponders. All Ku-band transponders feed into powerful 63 watt amplifiers.
PAS 4 features three regional C-band beams covering Africa (1), India and the Middle East (2), and an area stretching from eastern Asia to northern Australia (3). On the Ku band side, PAS 4 carries five distinct regional beams covering southern Africa, India, the Arabian peninsula, eastern Europe, and Northeast Asia. At least twelve of the twenty four Ku band transponders (which collectively can deliver up to 120 digital TV services) are expected to connect to the Ku band beam which targets the Indian subcontinent. In Thailand, a total of nine TV signals have been observed to date using either the C band Southern Asia-India or Asia-Australia Downlink Beams. All signals are well above receiver threshold using a 1.8 meter dish.
Some of the new regional services on PAS 4 have been developed for the Indian market by major international programmers with, in some cases, the assistance of India based broadcast partners. These include ESPN India, Asia Business News (ABNi), Sony Entertainment's new Hindi channel, MTV Asia, CNN International, Turner Network Television, and The Cartoon Network. In addition to a dozen transponders on the Insat satellites, Doordarshan TV, India's national broadcast network, has acquired two PAS 4 transponders (one C-band and one Ku-band) which are used for domestic and international TV distribution purposes.
An India Downlink Beam in the 12.2 to 12.75 GHz frequency range transmits a digital DTH demonstration service for STAR
TV, while the Northeast Asia Downlink Beam supplies video feeds for NHK, Japan's national broadcasting company. Following the completion of the in orbit testing of PAS 4, South African terrestrial TV channels CCV, SABC, NNTV and M-Net (Iredeto encrypted) began using the satellite's Ku band South Africa Downlink Beam to transmit their respective services in more or less conventional wideband analogue modes. Through its sister company MultiChoice, M-Net also is rolling out a second package of digitally compressed TV services via PAS 4's Ku band South African beam and a C band African beam covering all of Africa and the Arabian peninsula. Panasonic, Philips and Pace have been tapped to collectively supply more than one million MPEG 2 compliant IRDs for the new service. A total of sixteen South African and international TV channels and forty radio services eventually will be provided by MultiChoice once the service is in full swing. Expanding on SABC's launch of two additional free to air channels in December of 1995, the South African national broadcaster will begin offering a fourteen channel package of digital pay TV services by the end of 1996.
JCSAT 3
On August 29, 1995, Tokyo based Japan Satellite Systems Inc. (JSAT) launched its new dual band JCSat 3 satellite to an orbital assignment of 128 degrees east longitude. While all previous Japanese communications satellites have served a purely domestic function, JCSat has been expressly designed to provide regional telecommunications services. Prior to launch, the Japanese Ministry of Telecommunications had completed the required international co-ordination of the satellite with the telecom administrations of other countries in the region. On a parallel track, the Japanese government took the first step down the road toward liberalizing its restrictive satellite policies by granting landing rights to PanAmSat's PAS 2 and PAS 4 satellites so that its own forthcoming efforts to gain reciprocal landing rights in other countries would be seen in a better light.JCSat 3 provides four primary coverage beams: Ku band (12.2 to 12.75 GHz) beams centered over mainland Japan and Northeast Asia (1), India (2), and Australia-New Zealand (3); and a C band (3.94 to 4.2 GHz) beam that stretches from Japan to Southeast Asia to most of mainland China and India. Additional spot coverage of Hawaii, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Korean peninsula also will be available. A total of twelve C band and twenty eight Ku band transponders are carried by this spacecraft. At the time of writing, only test signals and color bars have been observed.
Koreasat 1 & 2
On August 5, 1995, South Korea's first domestic communications satellite was launched to an orbital assignment of 116 degrees east longitude. When the payload assist module failed to boost the new satellite to the required orbit, a major portion of the spacecraft's precious station keeping fuel had to be expended to propel Koreasat 1 into the correct geostationary orbit. Due to the resulting shortfall in station keeping fuel, Koreasat 1 will only achieve a mission lifetime of approximately four years. A second satellite, Koreasat 2, is scheduled to be launched in 1996 and collocated with Koreasat 1 at 116 degrees east longitude.Each Koreasat satellite carries fifteen Ku-band transponders: twelve low power transponders operating in the 12.2 to 12.7 GHz frequency band are for the relay of voice, data, and broadcast/cable TV feeds; and three high powered (110-watt) transponders operating in the 11.7 to 12.0 GHz frequency range are for the digitally compressed transmission of a dozen or more TV program services to South Korean households equipped with tiny 40cm receiving antennas.
The Ku band beam coverage provided by Koreasat is very narrow, but does reach beyond the Korean peninsula to include portions of Japan and Northeast China. The satellite's low-power transponders produce a nominal EIRP of 50 dBW while the high-powered DBS transponders generate a substantially higher EIRP of about 59 dBW.
Waiting in the Wings: Palapa C1
Scheduled for a January, 1996 launch, Indonesia's Palapa C1 will replace the Palapa B2P satellite located at 113 degrees east longitude which has ceased north-south station keeping due to a lack of fuel on board the spacecraft. Most of the regional programmers on Palapa B2P, including ESPN, Australia TV International, CNBC Asia, HBO, CNN International, STAR TV, Canale France, Discovery Channel, ABN, and national broadcasters from Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, will migrate to the new Palapa C1 spacecraft.Palapa C1 will carry thirty C band transponders, each with a bandwidth of 36 MHz, and four Ku band transponders, each with a bandwidth of 72 MHz. Palapa C1 will not only transmit using the conventional C band frequency spectrum of 3.7 to 4.2 GHz but also within a lower range of frequencies extending from 3.4 to 3.68 GHz. The Ku band frequency spectrum to be used by Palapa C1 ranges from 10.95 to 11.7 GHz.
Palapa C1 will carry two standard C band beams, one focused on Southeast Asia and the other ranging from Southeast Asia to as far south as eastern Australia and New Zealand. As many as twenty four of the satellite's thirty transponders will operate through one of these two available standard beams. A minimum of six additional C band transponders will connect to an extended C-band beam which will provide excellent coverage of the Asian continent from Japan and Korea in the east, to India in the west and Malaysia in the south. Palapa C1's two Ku-band beams will encompass Guam, Hong Kong, Japan, Macao, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand.
Palapa C EIRP contours: 38, 37, 36.5, 36...24 dBW
