The theme of this year’s NAB to be held this month in Las Vegas is “the great content shift.”   If you haven’t attended the NAB in the last five years, you’ll hardly recognize it now.   The focus is still on traditional broadcasting, but it has since incorporated the many changes in how content is  created, managed and distributed in the new multiplatform environment. The NAB now covers Over-the-Top (OTT), IPTV and other new and emerging technologies.  

The global space economy grew to US$ 289.77 billion in 2011, reflecting a surprisingly robust single-year expansion of 12.2 percent and five-year growth of 41 percent in a global economy that has been suppressed in many other sectors, according to the Space Report 2012 published by the Space Foundation.

The Satellite TV  industry is in the midst of a revolution according to a report by IBISWorld. Satellite TV providers  supply popular family shows, news, movies, sports, documentaries and other products to a growing swarm of eager subscribers willing to pay for in-home entertainment. For example, the introduction of high-definition (HD) TV vastly improved the quality of shows and attracted subscribers even as disposable income dropped during the Great Recession.

The city of Rio de Janeiro will once again be the location for the latest in the GVF-EMP Oil & Gas Communications Conference series as it launches into its 2012 global program.  Held in association with Harris CapRock, Intelsat, RigNet, Hughes, Telespazio, KVH, C-COM Satellite Systems, and with special thanks to Petrobras, ‘Oil & Gas Communications Brazil 2012: 21st Century Digital Oilfield & Gasfield Imperatives Onshore, Offshore, and in Deepwater’ will take place 25th & 26th April 2012 at the Windsor Barra Hotel.

ITU’s upcoming ITU Telecom World 2012 event will take place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) from 14-18 October 2012. The event, which follows the format pioneered at World 2011, will see interactive debate, networking and knowledge-sharing placed firmly at the center of an influential discussion agenda.

BroadcastAsia2012 International Conferencereturns with an impressive line-up of over 80 reputed industry speakers to deliberate on the most critical issues facing broadcasters today. Running from 19 to 22 June 2012 at the Suntec Convention Centre, the conference agenda foretells the ‘reinvention’ of the broadcast industry as content is re-purposed towards viewers who have become increasingly more mobile and who view content on various devices. Broadcasters are forced to reckon with this fact and gear up to cater to this growing trend.

Euroconsult, said that global budgets for space programs have reached a plateau of roughly $70 billion, confirming a slowdown in expansion experienced by the space industry for the last 10 years. According to Euroconsult's new report "Profiles of Government Space Programs: Analysis of 60 Countries & Agencies," Space programs received a short-term boost in recent years from several governments to counter the economic crisis. However, they must now undergo even more stringent budget constraints exemplified by the European public debt crisis and the U.S. Budget Control Act of 2011.

Satellite has become the leading TV infrastructure in Europe, ahead of terrestrial and cable reception according to the annual Satellite Monitor study presented by SES. Approximately 84 million European households have satellite (Direct-to-Home, DTH) as their primary TV reception mode, an increase of 22 percent over the last four years. In the same period, terrestrial TV lost nearly 16 million homes, while cable lost over 2 million. IPTV – the TV distribution over tele-communication networks in IP format – has grown from a very low level to some 16 million households.

IP&TV World Forum 2012 has been hailed a success, with more than 7,163 visitors filling the halls at London’s Olympia last week. The event, which has been rebranded to TV Connect for 2013, saw a ten per cent increase on last year’s attendee numbers and fuelled the debate on the converging TV market, further strengthening its position as the global platform for this dynamic market.

As BT and Virgin Media start to build scale in premises passed and customers sign to their superfast broadband services, some of the UK’s alternative network operators are beginning to find their niche. Although not all altnets will be successful, there are circumstances in which their varied and localised approaches look set to bring superfast broadband to individual communities that have often been struggling with access to even the most basic of broadband services.