Spreading the news

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Despite the brief popularity of alternative broadcast technologies Salehian believes traditional satellite uplinks offer the best quality and price.

"About ten years ago and again five years ago, people in the industry were talking about the demise of satellite as a means of distributing content. Satellite phones and the rise of FTP were gaining attention. You still see some of these tools used now.

CNN will regularly use these in live situations but you can see that the quality is not there. Everyone was saying that this was going to be the end of traditional broadcasting methods but that hasn't transpired. We saw a slight dip as people got excited by the new technology but we have come out the other end and now there is more demand than ever," claims Salehian and he is certain about the cause for this increase in demand.

"I put it down to the massive rise in the number of 24-hour news channels during the last five years. You simply can't afford to keep your channel updated on a regular basis using FTP only. Generally we have found that in locations where it is very hard to physically get equipment into or if it is an area that we can not access for political reasons - such as Burma - then that's where BGAN and sat phones can be very useful.

We tend to only resort to these in situations where we cannot use satellite. When our clients call and ask if we are going to be in a particular location, the next question is always ‘are you going to have a satellite?'"

While the volume of clients has increased so too has the quality of the signals that they wish to broadcast with demand for HD on the rise.

"We have actually seen the interest in traditional satellite delivery increase but this has happened at a time when capacity has levelled out. The result of course, is that the prices have gone up."

Although Salehian cites South Africa as one region in particular where prices have risen, partly due to the upcoming World Cup in 2010, talk of more widespread price increases are doing the rounds within the industry.

"We have been told as we come up to the renewal of our Eutelsat lease that there will be a price hike. There are scare stories in the industry that these increases will be as much as 30 percent.

"It would be very expensive for us to move but if it is too costly to stay then we would have to look at all the options," he admits.

"The way the market is at the moment, if you have some capacity to sell you can effectively name your own price."

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