Page 22 - The Channel Issue 2 2010

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22 | ISSUE 2 2010 | THE CHANNEL

have always believed you need to give every customer the attention and the time they deserve. As companies get bigger and bigger, this disappears. Here we are totally independent. We have no major allegiance to any particular satellite operator, we work with them all which for the customer means more freedom of choice. There is also the quality of our customer helpdesk - German, French, Polish, Russian, we have all these language skills in house and the customers can phone up and talk in their own language.

You make much of your location...

We have no obstructions from East to West and so the look-angle of the satellites is exceptionally good. We have no frequency interruptions here because we don't have any microwave or communication frequencies in operation in this location. When this was built in 1987 it was one of the central hubs for the Deutsche Telekom fibre network, and beneath the building here we sit on the main route going North-South and East-West, so we

BUILDINGA

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have access to a tremendous amount of fibre infrastructure - we just have to pay a connection charge. These are things that make it unique, and we don't have any restrictions on how many antennas or how much we build. We currently have over 50 antennas. This is a massive area, about 160 acres, with a building that was built to withstand the war. It's all bullet proof glass and a nuclear shelter down in the basement.

What are your core broadcast services?

We offer DTH services on the Eutelsat EB9 platform at 9 degrees, which is becoming the second community to the HotBird community at 13 degrees. EB9 covers the same footprint and is especially attractive for smaller TV companies wanting to get to the same region but at the same time drastically cutting their overheads. In both HotBird and EB9 locations, there is a tremendous number of ethnic channels and we are in a position where we can see satellites from America, Asia and also Australia so we can bring in channels to here, and then turn them around

onto the DTH platforms. We will eventually have a full playout service here but at the moment we are working with one or two companies who do that part of the service for us, insert adverts and commercials and things like this for local services in the various countries. This is part of the broadcast service function that we offer.

You operate globally – where are you strong?

The DTH platform is traditionally Germany going East towards what were the Eastern Bloc countries. EB9 attracts a lot of TV channels from those regions, plus ethnic channels – from India, Asia, Bangladesh, the Middle East, South and LatinAmerica. All these have an interest in Europe and more and more TV companies are looking to get their channels as far round the globe as possible. I am in negotiations with a customer at the moment who is looking at totally futuristic technology to take channels from Europe in the most cost effective way into the States.

Who are your competitors?

Most of the people in the industry.

REPUTATION

CET Teleport in Hameln, Germany, provides a wide range of media broadcasting and corporate VSAT services. In 2002 Ken Armstrong first assumed responsibility for the teleport in his role as VP of Plenexis, then, in an interesting twist, six years later he came back to run it as CEO when he acquired the teleport facility fromStratos Global. What's his secret of getting CET into the WTA's Top 20 and Fast 20 lists? “

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The

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