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Nilesat, the Middle East-based satellite operator is likely to order a new satellite in the first half of 2005. Salah Hamza, head of engineering, Nilesat, told Satellite News in an exclusive interview about the operator's capital expenditure plans, "In terms of new satellites, it is still under study. We do not have a clear plan right now. We will either plan to have a new satellite or we might go to a different solution for acquiring temporary capacity until we get a new satellite. The new satellite will be a Ku-band satellite. We would hope to order the new satellite by the second quarter of 2005."
The operator, which is based out of Cairo, Egypt, is one of the biggest regional operators in the Middle East. Established in 1996, Nilesat is a significant player in terms of driving direct-to-home (DTH) in the region, and is seeing strong demand for its services. According to Hamza, "We are clearly seeing a big demand on our satellites. We have 240 TV channels on the two satellites. We still have a backlog of new channels. Our plan is to have satellite services that are not devoted to DTH services like backhaul, newsgathering capacity. We are going to have capacity to put these services on. We have two transponders free for our new requests. We also are working on adding data transmission services and VSAT services. We want to diversify our revenue base."
In particular, the DTH markets in the Middle East are seeing strong growth, due to a more relaxed regulatory framework...