Milestones

Founded in 1976 by the 21 member-states of the Arab League, Arabsat has been serving the growing needs of the Arab world for over 30 years. Now ranked as the world’s 9th largest satellite operator, and by far the leading satellite services provider in the Arab world, it carries 340+ TV channels and 160+ Radio stations, reaching tens of millions of homes in over 100 countries across the Middle East, Africa and Europe, including  an audience of more than 164 million viewers within the 21 Arab countries alone     (as per the "2007 MENA Satellite Landscape" study performed by IPSOS for Arabsat). 

Operating a growing fleet of 4 satellites at the 26° East and 30.5° East positions of the geostationary orbit, Arabsat is the only satellite operator in the region offering the full spectrum of Broadcast, Telecommunications and Broadband services. This translates to enough space capacity for providing a greater number than any other player in the region of TV and Radio broadcasting services, professional data network solutions, telephony & IP trunking backbone connectivity, and broadband Internet access to media and entertainment companies, corporate customers or government entities.

Arabsat also maintains strategic partnerships with most of the world’s leading satellite companies, packaged services aggregators, and Value-Added Services integrators, allowing customers to reach farther than ever and deliver content or state-of-the-art solutions to any end-viewers' audience or business partners around the world.

Arabsat is committed to stay at the forefront of satellite services in the region, continuously expanding its range of customer-oriented solutions with an unparalleled level of quality, bringing in cutting-edge technology, and providing the largest ever amount of capacity to meet the growing and evolving needs of its customers across the Arab world--and beyond. To support this ambition, Arabsat has announced in 2007 that, starting in 2008, it will launch one new satellite every year over four years, with a second 4^th Generation satellite to be launched mid-2008 –BADR-6, and three 5^th Generation spacecrafts either under construction or RFP to be launched over the following three years.

Satellites

§  BADR-3, BADR-4 & BADR-6 (04-Jul-08), all co-located at Arabsat's 26° East Direct-to-Home (DTH) "Hot Spot" in Ku-band;

§    BADR-C (until Q3-2008), also @ 26° East but operating in C-band, mainly for DTH broadcasting towards Africa;

§   Arabsat-2B @ 30.5°E, essentially carrying Telecommunications services in both         C-band and Ku-band.

This variety of satellites enables Arabsat to provide the highest downlink power and the widest coverage area over the MENA (Middle-East & North-Africa) region compared to any other satellite operator. In addition, with its recently launched BADR-4, and the brand new state-of-the-art BADR-6 coming soon, Arabsat will have by far the youngest, and therefore the most reliable and verstile, fleet in the region. 

In addition to its own space capacity, and thanks to a series of strategic partnerships with the world leaders in satellite communications, Arabsat also provides its customers with One-Stop-Shopping seamless complementary connectivity with the rest of the world via its "Global Arabic Bouquet" digital DTH platforms, enabling Broadcast customers to reach their final audiences 24/7, wherever they are on the planet.

Services

ARABSAT customers use its satellites for 2 main ranges of services: 

Broadcasting (2/3rd of rev.)

·    Direct-to-Home TV & Radio broadcasting (DTH), Digital & Analogue;
·   "Global Arabic Bouquet" digital DTH selection of channels for Arab viewers in Europe, Africa, North & South America, and Asia;
·     High-Definition TV with the only 3 HD-TV channels available live 24/7 over the entire Middle East & North Africa region, and increasingly more over the coming months;

·     Distribution: Point-to-multipoint links feeding aggregation and re-broadcasting sites (head-ends, transmit towers, etc);

§    Backhauling: Links from content-origination locations to multiplexing and uplinking sites;

·     Contribution: Point-to-point repatriation links;

·     Occasional Use TV: Program exchanges and feeds, e.g. News, Sports, and Special Events.

Telecommunications (1/3rd of rev.)

·     Voice & Data trunking;

§     Internet backbone connectivity;

§     Regional Telephony interconnection;

·     Data networks;

§     Public/Government networks, mostly domestic;

§     Private networks, either intra-regional or domestic.

Arab Satellite Communications Organization

eMail: info@arabsat.com

Fax: +966 1 483 0940

P.O. Box: 1038, Diplomatic Quarter, Riyadh 11431, KSA