Taking flight

摘要

DTH in Europe is buoyant with pay-TV in central and eastern Europe and HDTV presenting the major operators with plenty of room for growth. Despite some premature predictions that the growing appeal of triple-play services and on-demand TV could sideline satellite as yesterday's technology, direct-to-home broadcasting in Europe is in robust health. Operators with strong European footprints have been demonstrating extremely strong financial performances. Global leader SES, for example, turned in solid first-quarter results, with revenue and EBITDA both up 21% on the same period last year. Eutelsat's full-year results were also very strong, with a quadrupling of net income. Eutelsat's management has managed to raise targets consistently in line with better-than-expected performance over the past two years.