Intelsat Partners with Telenor to Expand the Reach of Its Fiber Network in Europe

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12, 2006/Satnews Daily/ — Intelsat and Telenor Satellite Broadcasting AS (TSBc) have entered into an agreement to interconnect the two companies' fiber networks in London, providing customers of both Intelsat and Telenor with expanded, seamless access to new regions and services through each provider.

Under the agreement, Telenor now has complete access to services on Intelsat's 51 satellites and GlobalConnex Media fiber and teleport network. This enables Telenor to offer global, end-to-end solutions to its broadcast customers who are primarily located in the UK, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.

Telenor said this new capability is expected to generate interest among European broadcasters who are seeking to carry U.S. professional sports content, especially for basketball and ice-hockey, which are already carried on Intelsat's U.S. fiber network in both high definition (HD) and standard definition (SD).

The London interconnect, being established as an extension of Intelsat's successful partnership with Broadwing Communications in the U.S., will allow Intelsat to provide its customers worldwide with services originating and terminating in six of Telenor's European points-of-presence (PoP). Content will pass through the interconnect in first generation, with no format changes or conversions necessary. This will allow Intelsat to better support coverage of sports and news events originating in the region, and improve access to DTH platforms on Intelsat and Telenor satellites that are co-located at 1 degree W.

“We expect this interconnect will significantly expand our customer service in Europe,” said David Gilmore, Telenor's commercial director. He added the agreement will bring enhanced sports and news coverage in both SD and HD to programmers in Europe, as well as marketing the 1 degree W European DTH platform to programmers worldwide.”

Stephen Spengler, Intelsat's senior vice president for Europe, Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific Sales, said Intelsat’s customers can now access the huge quantity of content carried on our network each day and reach global cable and DTH platforms in more than 40 cities on three continents via a simple fiber connection.

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