European Space Agency
European Space Agency
The study permited a complete understanding of the broadcasting new market trends and services needs. Based on the Broadcasting Satellite Services (BSS) requirements, several system architectures with their business case have been proposed and optimised. Finally, a European industry strategy and required supports from the Agency for further programmes have been identified.
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| SES Broadcasting Satellite Astra2B, manufactured by Astrium | |
Digital broadcasting services are growing fast. At the same time, in a market driven by internet applications, more interactivity is expected on the TV set. The TV-PC convergence and the rapid development of technologies for personalisation and storage are redefining the digital TV business from simply providing choice and interactivity to providing a sophisticated form of On-Demand TV.
If for sure On-Demand applications and personalised content should be a major issue for next generation broadcasting business, multimedia content delivery to mobile and nomadic users will be the challenge of future systems.
Key trends of the business include:
Finally, emerging competition from terrestrial systems (DTT, ADSL, LMDS, UMTS, etc.) must be taken into account when designing the system.
The project should enable a complete understanding of the key trends in the new generation BSS market:
As terrestrial broadband technologies will compete soon with satellite systems, satellite market shares in broadcasting have to be enforced with adequate systems addressing current and future market demands.
Therefore, the project should identify possible European strategy in the field of broadcasting satellite systems alongside with the key technologies that would have to be supported. The role of ESA, of the European Commission and of other national agencies to support this European strategy in the broadcasting satellites arena will be clearly defined.
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The study is divided into five tasks, in accordance with the following plan:
Task 1
Task 2
Task 3
Task 4
Task 5
The study was kicked-off on November 6th, 2000, and was concluded Early 2002. Taxonomy of services was established and seven market segments were identified. This is presented in the following table:
Four market scenarios (mix market segments & set of services) were created and studied from the business perspective, i.e. both the possible market organisations and quantitative estimates. These scenarios are:
1. Enhanced "traditional broadcasting" DTH services, addressing directly the final user with TV & radio channels, on-demand music & TV programming and push media services.
2. Broadcasting of content to intermediaries mainly cable head ends, ISPs and content providers.
3. Internet access offering through broadcasting satellite on a bundling-basis with PSTN and ADSL terrestrial networks.
4. Mobile services, where satellite is part of the delivery chain, either Direct-To-Mobile or broadcasting towards mobile LANs as e.g. transport means.
In parallel, a number of technical requirements of each of the services were identified as potentially of interest for the end user. A group of content and application providers has been established a set of requirements for the satellite as part of an end-to-end service provision for their particular business needs. Business opportunities for each of the scenarios identified above have been assessed as well as the corresponding system and sub-sequent elements. A set of new development areas has been identified for both the ground and space segments, while a possible European strategy is proposed.
The Executive Summary Report of this study is available here
