TricolorTV launches broadband services in Russia via EUTELSAT 36C satellite

Paris, 8 September 2016 – TricolorTV, Russia’s fastest growing pay-TV platform, with 12 million subscribers, has officially launched its new broadband service using the High Throughput Ka-band capacity on the EUTELSAT 36C satellite commercialised by Eutelsat Communications (NYSE Euronext Paris: ETL). The new service offers consumer and professional subscribers Internet access with speeds of up to 40 Mbps downstream and 12 Mbps upstream, with a range of tariffs tailored to end-user requirements.

Launched in December 2015, the EUTELSAT 36C satellite features high-power capacity for TV broadcasting in European parts of the Russian Federation and a High Throughput payload comprising 18 Ka-band beams delivering continuous coverage of Western Russia, from the Arctic coastline to the Caspian Sea. Eutelsat selected Gilat’s SkyEdge II-c hub with X-Architecture and SkyEdge II-c small user terminals to power broadband services from EUTELSAT 36C from a hub installed at the Dubna satellite centre operated by RSCC, near Moscow.

Kirill Yanchenko, CEO of Eutelsat Networks, the Moscow-based subsidiary driving Eutelsat’s broadband strategy in Russia: “We are delighted to see the Ka-band payload on EUTELSAT 36C go live with TricolorTV, a longstanding Eutelsat customer that is already a leader in mass market satellite broadcasting. We believe this significant first step will facilitate wide adoption of satellite broadband in Russia.”

Alexey Karpov, Director of Sales and Customer Service at TricolorTV: “We are confident that this new service will deliver an excellent quality high-speed broadband service to our subscribers, particularly the many that are not well served by terrestrial infrastructure.”

In addition to collaborating on broadband deployment, Eutelsat and TricolorTV announced in July the launch in Russia of a multi-screen video delivery service using Eutelsat’s new ‘SmartBeam’ solution that receives high-quality TV channels and VOD content via satellite and serves it locally to mobile phones and tablets over a Wi-Fi network.