With more than half of the 85 million strong population being under the age of 30 years, Vietnam’s subscription-TV business was given a boost at the CASBAA Vietnam’s Pay-TV Industry Seminar in Hanoi.

The seminar, themed "Pay-TV on the Rise", brought together more than 200 Vietnamese government officials, international industry decision makers and media to have a 360-degree analysis of the Vietnam pay-TV sector, including business models; the channel licensing process; intellectual property rights; copyright challenges; the prospects for Cable, DTH, IPTV and content production.

The Connection is in the Satcoms. In my various recent columns in this space I have focused on important, and ongoing, key thematic developments in the communications solutions marketplace which are separately, and collectively, creating manifold expansion opportunities for the satellite communications industry to leverage the several advantages that it has over all other communications technologies and platforms. 

The issue of inadequate bandwidth in the world very small aperture terminal (VSAT) market has experienced a conflicting impact: a spurt in service revenues and, simultaneously, a dip in the sales of equipment or hardware. VSAT providers, while pleased with the hike in service revenues, are wary of pricing many potential, cost-sensitive VSAT users out of the market.  

A telco PR executive once remarked to me that satellite was like a solution always looking for a problem.  Given that he was looking to represent my satellite consultancy firm, I thought this was an odd way to earn my business!  Dents to my ego aside, what this guy was reflecting is simply the wider telecommunications industry and a great many potential customers’ perception of satellite – VSAT communications in particular.  How things have changed!

The increasing use of telecommunications and ICTs for emergency communications, international agreements, new national policies, partnerships for cooperation in emergency are important tools already in place for even faster response to disasters. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) as the UN agency encharged with telecommunications and information communications technologies (ICT) is leading the efforts in harmonizing technologies, services and establishing standards for emergency communications.

The satellite manufacturing sector will experience steady growth in the coming decade, although a fallout from the extended and slow economic recovery will see the number of satellites in the near future drop significantly by almost 10 percent, according to a report entitled "Global Satellite Manufacturing: The Impact of Evolving Trends" by Frost and Sullivan.

At the beginning of 2008 Carlsbad, CA-based equipment manufacturer ViaSat startled the world with the announcement of ViaSat-1. Startling not only because of the capacity of the satellite, announced at 100Gbps, (but now increased to 125Gbps) represented a ten fold increase on existing Ka-Band satellites, but also because ViaSat with no operating experience was planning to enter a market dominated by two major players: WildBlue and Hughes. These two operators currently have just under one million subscribers between them.

by Lou Zacharilla, Director of Development, SSPI

Depending on whose science or projections you believe, the world is melting, its waters rising and its future looking a lot like the movie "2012." It may well be. Among the many stepping forward to help save it, the global teleport industry is now taking its turn.

The Year of Living Dangerously" is a great 1983 film by Australian director Peter Weir about an Aussie  journalist (Mel Gibson) covering political turmoil in Indonesia during the reign of Sukarno. He gets caught up in the chaos of an abortive Communist revolution and manages to escape, barely, with his life.

Detailed analysis of the pernicious effects of pay-TV signal theft on economic and social development in Southeast Asia featured strongly throughout a series of government and industry meetings held in December 2009 in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The CASBAA-coordinated meetings were centered on an APEC and ASEAN symposium which covered the protection of broadcast content with officials drawn from 16 governments from around the Asia-Pacific region.