SES (company)

SES S.A.

File:SES.svg
Company type	Public (LuxSE: SESG, Euronext: SESG)
Industry	Telecommunications
Founded	1985
Headquarters	Château de Betzdorf, Betzdorf, Luxembourg
Key people	René Steichen (Chairman of the board), Romain Bausch (President and CEO)
Products	Satellite telecommunications and services
Revenue	€1.630 billion (2008)
Operating income	€625.1 million (2008)
Net income	€387.5 million (2008)
Number of employees	1,620 (2008)
Website	www.ses.com

SES S. A. (LuxSE: SESG, Euronext: SESG) has a fleet of 40 satellites at 26 orbital positions making it one of the world's leading provider of satellite communication and transmission services. Originally founded as Société Européenne des Satellites in 1985, it was renamed SES Global in 2001 and later simply ‘SES’ as the group management company of SES Astra, SES World Skies and other satellite and satellite service companies in which SES holds a stake, SES Sirius, ND SatCom and APS (Astra Platform Services) being the principal ones.

SES is based in Betzdorf, Luxembourg and is listed on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange and Euronext Paris under the ticker symbol SESG. It is a component of the LuxX, CAC Next 20 and Euronext 100 indices.

Group companies

Group structure of SES (Numbers in brackets indicate percentage of participation)

	SES
Satellite operating companies	SES WORLD SKIES (100%) SES Astra (100%)
Major regional participations	Ciel (70%) Quetzsat (49%) SES Sirius (90%) Solaris Mobile (50%)
Satellite service companies	Americom Government Services (100%) APS (100%) SES Astra Broadband Services (100%) ND SatCom (100%) SES Astra TechCom (100%)

History

Building the satellite neighbourhood 1985–1990

SES was formed on the initiative and support of the Luxembourg Government in 1985 as Société Européenne des Satellites (SES). The Luxembourg State remains a major shareholder. As Europe’s first private satellite operator, SES launched ASTRA 1A, its first satellite, in 1988. ASTRA 1A entered service at the orbital position 19.2° East in 1989. Rupert Murdoch’s SKY TV, along with German broadcasters Pro7, Sat. 1, and RTL were among ASTRA’s first major customers.

In 1990, ASTRA was already broadcasting to 14 million cable and direct-to-home (DTH) viewers. SES ASTRA was the pioneer of ‘co-location’ by which several satellites share the same orbital position. This had never been done before, so that SES had to develop its own software and technology to control and manage multiple satellites within close proximity to each other. Co-location generated the capacity that attracted dozens of channels to a single orbital location, creating what became known as the 'satellite neighbourhood' concept that would drive SES growth for the next two decades and be copied by rivals like Eutelsat. A greater selection of channels at one orbital position attracts viewers to point their dishes at that slot, which in turn attracts more broadcasters and hence more viewers. ASTRA's prime slots, such as 19.2 East, have seen as many as eight satellites sharing the same position at one time. Co-location also helped build up ASTRA’s reputation for outstanding reliability based on the strength in depth of its fleet. Today, SES boasts network availability levels of 99.999%.

Rapid growth and the move into digital

Rapid growth in Germany, in what would become ASTRA’s largest European market, was helped by the German government’s decision to liberalize the installation of dishes in 1991, of which there were already 3.5 million in Europe alone. In this time SES became the leading satellite system providing direct-to-home transmission, and became the world’s largest satellite platform for TV distribution. Expansion of SES’satellite fleet in the 1990s with (5 launches between 1995 – 1999) went hand-in-hand with the growth in the number of channels offered via ASTRA, as well as growing sales of ASTRA-enabled dishes. In 1996, after the launch of ASTRA 1E the year before, SES pioneered digital satellite transmission with the French Canal+ . In 1998, SES launched ASTRA 2A for the UK market, transmitting at the new orbital position 28.2° EAST, and eventually moving all of its U.K. and Ireland transmission capacity to this orbital slot. In the same year, and reflecting its rapid growth over the past ten years, SES went public on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange and in 2005, the Paris EURONEXT Stock Exchanges, trading as SESG.

Global expansion through acquisition and diversification

The acquisition of a 34.1% stake in AsiaSat in 1998 began a period of ambitious global expansion beyond SES’ European home market that would lead to the formation of SES GLOBAL in 2001, renamed SES in 2006.This geographic expansion went hand in hand with the diversification of SES’ product offering into a range of satellite services, including technical consultancy, satellite reception and distribution services, government and military communications and more recently a range of mobile and multimedia and internet services, such as IP-PRIME in the U.S. and ASTRA2Connect in Europe.

In 2000, SES acquired a 50% stake in the Scandinavian satellite broadcaster Nordic Satellite AB (NSAB), later renamed SES SIRIUS, which strengthened SES’ coverage in northern and eastern Europe. In 2001, SES completed the acquisition of GE AMERICOM resulting in the formation of SES GLOBAL comprising two operating companies, SES ASTRA and SES AMERICOM. Altogether, SES now operated a fleet of 41 satellites, the largest in the world at the time.

Further acquisitions followed in 2006 and included New Skies, later renamed SES NEW SKIES, which added six satellites to the SES fleet and strengthened its coverage in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. SES also took a 100% stake in ND SatCom a German provider of government services. In December 2006, SES GLOBAL was renamed SES.

Recent developments

In March 2007, SES bought back all of GE’s shares and participations in AMERICOM as part of a complex divestiture transaction agreement. As part of the deal, SES divested certain assets, including AsiaSat as well Star One, SATLYNX and a spacecraft over the Pacific Ocean. GE is obligated to hold the spacecraft asset until 2012.

SES ASTRA grew its stake in SES SIRIUS to 90% in 2008 . In June 2008, SES ASTRA and competitor Eutelsat set up the joint venture Solaris Mobile. Solaris Mobile will deliver media services to mobile and handheld devices via a satellite to be launched in 2009. In July 2008, SES announced the merger of its two international operating units, SES AMERICOM and SES NEW SKIES into a ‘new segment’ under Rob Bednarek as President and CEO. As the organizations consolidated, the IP-PRIME service, an IPTV service, was shut down completely. The new segment was re-branded as SES WORLD SKIES on 7 September 2009.

SES’ standing in the industry

SES has long been considered to be one of the global market leaders of satellite communications services and a pioneer in many important industry developments and boasting outstanding performance and reliability levels. SES pioneerd Direct-to-Home transmission (DTH), free-to-air broadcast neighbourhoods, digital broadcasting, HDTV and IPTV. In 2007 SES was named ‘Satellite Operator of the Year’ and its CEO, Romain Bausch is the recipient of numerous awards and honours including ‘Satellite Executive of the Year’ in 2002.

SES services

Through its operating companies and participations, SES provides satellite transmission capacity and related services to media broadcasters, businesses as well for civil government and military communications. SES satellites transmit a variety of formats from radio to High Definition TV, (HDTV) in MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. SES has been a major player in the development of the direct-to-home market in Europe and the IPTV market in the U.S.. In Europe, SES ASTRA pioneered the introduction of HDTV and has been instrumental in defining HDTV standards with the HD ready label. In the U.S., SES AMERICOM provides cable-feed services as well as IP-PRIME, an MPEG-4 based IPTV platform that allows users to access TV services, including HDTV channels, via the internet.

In Europe, SES ASTRA supplies ASTRA2Connect a satellite-based, broadband internet access for residential users. The product is used to offer TV reception, internet access and telephony to end users in remote locations where terrestrial broadband services are not available.

Government services

SES supplies satellite capacity to governments for the delivery of video, internet, voice and data to government agencies. In the U.S., AMERICOM Government Services (AGS) delivers to both civilian and defence agencies of the U.S. government. Outside the U.S., SES NEW SKIES also provides worldwide satellite transmission services for the U.S. government and U.S. military including non-combat communications, such as TV and internet for serving soldiers as well as emergency relief communications.

In Europe, SES ASTRA’s government services unit, NDSatCom provides global satellite-based communications services to broadcasters, government agencies, public administration and their contractors.

Future launches

SES has the industry's most ambitious launch programme, with eight new satellites planned between 2009–2011 (see below for details). The most recent, NSS-9, was successfully launched on February 12, 2009 by Ariane 5ECA launch vehicle from Kourou, French Guiana.

Upcoming satellite launches in chronological order:

Operating Company	Satellite	Expected launch date	Function/Remark
SES NEW SKIES	NSS-9	Launched successful: 12.02.09	Planned to be positioned at the orbital location of 183° East, allowing NSS-5 to be re-deployed to a new orbital slot.
SES WORLD SKIES	NSS-12	Successfully launched 29.10.09	Will operate at the orbital position of 57° East and will serve as a replacement for the NSS-8 spacecraft which was destroyed on its launch pad in January 2007.
SES ASTRA	ASTRA 3B	4. Quarter, 2009	Planned to deliver additional capacity at the orbital position 23.5° East.
SES WORLD SKIES	AMC-1R	2. Quarter, 2010	Will provide replacement capacity for AMC-1 at 103° West and in addition will serve a number of alternate purposes.
SES WORLD SKIES	AMC-5R	3. Quarter, 2010	This hybrid C/Ku-band spacecraft will replace the two currently providing service at the 79° West orbital location, AMC-5 and Satcom C3.
SES WORLD SKIES	NSS-14	4. Quarter, 2010	Will operate at 338° East, To be replaced by NSS-7.
SES ASTRA	ASTRA 1N	2. Quarter, 2011	Will initially replace ASTRA 1G at the orbital position 19.2° East.
SES SIRIUS	SIRIUS 5	3. Quarter, 2011	Will have 36 Ku-band transponders serving Northern Europe and the Baltic region as well as the African markets. It will also have 24 C-band transponders (36 megahertz each) for global and hemispheric coverage.
SES WORLD SKIES	NSS-16	1. Quarter, 2012	Will operate at 319.5° East, To be replaced by NSS-806.
SES ASTRA	ASTRA 2E ASTRA 2F ASTRA 2G ASTRA 5B	Six-monthly from 2012	EADS Astrium Eurostar E3000 spacebus, as rolling replacement for the 28.2E orbital position capacity, and to expand the 31.5E orbital position

External links

• Official website
• Launch schedule on LyngSat