The teleport business is changing rapidly. To a get an insight on the dynamics of this vital segment of the satellite industry, Satellite Executive Briefing spoke with Vladimir Rangelov, Senior Manager, Broadcast Services at VIVACOM--Bulgaria’s largest media company that operates a teleport, among its other businesses. Excerpts of the interview:
How is your location in Bulgaria beneficial to your clients? What advantages and benefits can you offer?
Bulgaria is on the crossroads between Europe and Asia. The geographical location of Plana Teleport allows us to provide uplink and downlink services via GEO satellites from 40° West to 90° East. We provide access to one of the most popular satellite positions covering Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. VIVACOM has pointed antennas to satellite positions and beams which are not accessible from Central and Western Europe and Americas. We can easily add new uplink or downlink carriers and provide the signal at our major PoP’s in Europe like Frankfurt, London, Paris and many others.
The ground station is located in an especially selected area with minimal rainfalls and excellent protection against electromagnetic interference. This is extremely important for the growing Ka band transmissions, so we’re in excellent position to offer best location for such Earth stations and gateways. But the most important advantage is that we’re providing the right service fast, on time. We exceed our customer expectations and we deliver more, at optimized cost for our clients with undoubted service reliability.
The teleport business is a very competitive sector, what differentiates your company from other teleports?
Three points – fast reaction, excellent customer support, reliability. Customers optimize their costs using our services. We invest long term in satellite business and we have excellent relationship with our partners and clients. We’re constantly analyzing the market and we know exactly where to invest and how to develop our service portfolio.
VIVACOM has more than 40 years’ experience in satellite communications and we have dedicated highly motivated team developing and supporting the business.
What do you see as the key opportunities for your company and how do you plan to make the most of these opportunities?
Currently our main teleport business is media broadcasting and a lot of major media groups like Disney, FOX, Viasat and Viacom has already recognized VIVACOM as a reliable and trusted partner. VIVACOM uplink more than 200 TV and radio channels for Europe, Africa and Latin America. We also provide Play out solutions as bundle with the satellite transmission services.
As some big projects in LEO and GEO are coming, we decide to invest in acquiring additional land for antenna hosting, we also upgraded the power supply and connectivity of the teleport. We have been selected by Eutelsat for hosting one of their new Ka band gateways. VIVACOM also invested in DVB-S2x iDirect hub providing regional Maritime VSAT coverage, where we see growing demand.
VIVACOM also hosts S/X band LEO earth station for nano satellites for our partner Endurosat – a Bulgarian company, manufacturing cubesats. Together, we’re providing End-to-End LEO Ground Station Services so we are prepared to face the future. There are a lot of projects that are expected to be completed in the next couple of years and Plana Teleport is the perfect location for hosting the LEO gateway stations.
What are your targets in the next few years? How would you like to see you company in the next few years?
It’s the seventh year of growth for our wholesale satellite business. Last year we have 15% year on year revenue increase which is very satisfying result. We’ll continue to provide high quality reliable services to our customers and we’ll continue to invest in the right projects in the challenging satellite business. Our team is passionate doing that.
