As India hurtles towards inevitable digitisation, the intricacies of broadcasting are becoming ever more apparent. The CASBAA India Forum 2013, on March 7 in New Delhi, brings into focus the disparate voices of various television industry stakeholders, who each have an interest in a thriving India.

For the first time, delegates from both the CommunicAsia2013 Summit and BroadcastAsia2013 International Conference will be participating in a two-part visionary address on 19 June 2013. The first is the Governmental Visionary Address by the Minister for Technology, State Government of Victoria, Australia, The Hon. Gordon Rich-Phillips. This is followed by the Industry Visionary Address by Mr. Karim Temsamani, Head of Asia Pacific, Google.

Bob Zitter, EVP and CTO of Home Box Office (HBO) and Daniel Danker, General Manager of On Demand at the BBC, leading industry players in the OTT space, are set to deliver keynotes at next month’s TV Connect in London. The conference and exhibition, now in its ninth year, has evolved to reflect the changing nature of the converging connected entertainment ecosystem, which increasingly looks towards services, content and user-experience, rather than just technology, to drive the market.

Ultra HD or what is also called 4KTV was the buzz at the CES show in Las Vegas this year.  With its high bandwidth requirements, Ultra HD has the potential to be the next big user of satellite services.   NSR's Jose del Rosario believes the market push for Ultra HD is expected to be led by three key regions of the globe, notably North America, Western Europe and East Asia, home to the wealthiest in terms of household disposable income levels and pay-TV households.

Arabsat has signed an agreement with the Hellenic Telecommunication Organization (OTE;), one of the largest telecom groups in South Eastern Europe, for the acquisition of its 99.05% equity participation in Hellas-Sat Consortium Ltd.The share purchase agreement was signed upon an aggregate consideration of €208 million  (US$ 280 mil).

The purchase price represents 99.05%, of:

• An enterprise value of Hellas-Sat, amounting to €157 million, which corresponds to 7 times the EBITDA of Hellas Sat for 2012, and

As part of a broader initiative to prevent signal interference, GVF today announced that it is working with the organizers of Cabsat in Dubai to highlight satellite communications equipment that has been tested and approved in co-ordination with a global product-certification initiative.

There are a total of 6 exhibitors with approved products at Cabsat. Those technologies will have demonstrated compliance with GVF-coordinated industry standards, which encourage integrity in equipment design, production, and performance.

When writing under a leaden winter UK sky during January the subject of CABSAT in the rather warmer month of March in the UAE is a very easy one to turn to, and indeed there’s much on the critical agenda on which to be informed. Thus, this year GVF has a very busy CABSAT week, focused on both the Dubai International Convention & Exhibition Center (DICEC) and the GVF/MenaNets Training Facility in Dubai’s Jebel Ali Free Zone.

It is a bad time to sell satellite ground segment, aka a teleport.  But it is a great time to sell a successful satellite services business with a teleport at its core. That paradox is the conclusion of Best Practices in Teleport Valuation, a newly published report from the World Teleport Association.

BroadcastAsia, CommunicAsia, and EnterpriseIT – Asia’s largest and most established media communications and information communications technology (ICT) events – are set to return this year to showcase the latest technologies and trends for the entire communications ecosystem.

SpeedCast Ltd, has completed, with the support of its majority shareholder, TA Associates, a buyout of maritime services provider Elektrikom Satellite Services, based in the Netherlands.